Certification in Functional Medicine

With a desire to reach a greater level of excellence and constantly improve our service, Sanoviv developed a relationship with the Institute for Functional Medicine, most commonly known as IFM, a non-profit educational organization.  Sanoviv’s goal was to ensure that our functional medicine practitioners achieved and maintained a high level of mastery in functional medicine and to provide safe and consistent assessment and treatment for our patients.

In early 2007, a consulting project was established to assure continued education training in functional medicine for all of Sanoviv’s medical staff, which includes physicians, chiropractors, dentists, nutritionists and psychologists.

The objectives was to learn how to utilize the functional medicine matrix as a clinical tool for improving evaluation and treatment of patients with complex and chronic disease , to integrate key principles of functional medicine into clinical practice and to utilize appropriate assessment tools, including laboratory evaluation and physical signs to diagnose, treat and follow patients.

The consulting project, which started at the beginning of 2007 until summer 2008, was divided into two phases. During the first phase, Sanoviv’s medical staff made the commitment to attend seminars every other weekend in our education center. The entire weekend was then dedicated to a special subject and IFM would send a faculty member specialized in the specific subject. We would attend lectures, present one of our clinical cases to the team, do case study breakout and at the end of the weekend we would have a short examination and review the key principles of the weekend classes. During our working week, we would attend webcast seminars which were specialized in laboratory assessment and study the textbook of functional medicine.

During the first phase, Sanoviv’s medical staff had two extensive examinations in functional medicine principles, physiology, functional biochemistry, diagnostic assessment and treatments.  In order to receive the final certification, each medical staff member needed to show their level of mastery and required a minimum of 80% in the mid-term and final written examination.

During the second phase which extended from fall 2007 to summer 2008, twice a month, an IFM faculty member was sent for a complete week to shadow Sanoviv’s practitioners with their patients. They would support and advise the practitioners with complex cases and share their functional medicine expertise with our team. With the help of IFM faculty team members, Sanoviv created committees that worked on improving different areas of care.

To complete the certification, Sanoviv’s medical team members each had to present a clinical case and be evaluated orally by a board of IFM faculty member.

Sanoviv is the first and only Medical Institute and Hospital to have received certification by the Institute for Functional Medicine in the world.