The Functional Medicine Matrix (created within the Living Matrix program) is a tool that assists practitioners in organizing and prioritizing the health issues of each patient as elicited by a thorough personal, family, social, and medical history. It is specifically organized in order to help practitioners gain a comprehensive perspective of each patient as a whole, and to facilitate discussion of complex medical issues.

There are three parts of the Matrix graphic

The Patient’s Story: This part of the Matrix allows practitioners to organize the predisposing factors (antecedents), precipitating events (triggers), and ongoing contributors (mediators) of each patient’s chronic health problem(s).
Physiology and Function: This part of the Matrix facilitates organization of clinical imbalances and prompts the practitioner to think about each patient’s symptoms in terms of the underlying clinical imbalances that may be causing or exacerbating those symptoms. It contains seven ‘nodes’ named for the physiological process that together make up the body’s function: Assimilation, Defense and Repair, Energy, Biotransformation and Elimination, Transport, Communication, and Structural Integrity.
Fundamental Lifestyle Factors: This part of the Matrix examines the patient’s environment and lifestyle including diet, stress, and exercise. These are the health-changing areas that the patient is most in control of. These are also a good ‘jumping-off point’, allowing patients and practitioners to collaboratively agree upon foundational proactive changes that promote health.

Why use Living Matrix?

The use of this technology, formatting, and creating a Functional Medicine Timeline and Matrix makes it accessible to patients so they are able to see the development of the conditions they are facing and motivate changes necessary to enhance their health.

Living Matrix is a cloud-based application that streamlines and automates the paper intake process, maps patient information into the Functional Medicine Timeline and Matrix and makes tracking patients’ progress easy.
Living Matrix allows the practitioners in our office to personalize information in real time and provide patients with a hard copy of their health assessment. As a patient, you’ll not only gain useful insight into your health during your visit, but you’ll walk away from your appointment with an understandable, easy-to-read view of your current health, a list of health goals, and if necessary, a Functional Medicine prescription.