MUFO (MoveTips Unified Functional Ontology) is a conceptual framework for describing human functional states, decision boundaries, and functional reasoning in a unified semantic structure.
It provides a reusable and auditable semantic foundation for understanding human function across healthcare, rehabilitation, and movement science.
Modern medicine focuses primarily on disease diagnosis and pathology.
However, a large population experiences functional limitations without diagnosable disease.
At the same time, functional improvement knowledge exists across medicine, rehabilitation, and training disciplines but is often fragmented and experience-based.
MUFO aims to organize this knowledge into a unified ontology of concepts, relationships, and constraints.
MUFO defines human function as:
The integrated ability of the human body to complete tasks efficiently and sustainably under specific contexts with minimal physiological, mechanical, and psychological cost.
Human function emerges from the interaction of eight elements:
- Task
- Movement
- Strategy
- Capacity
- System
- Structure
- Psychology
- Behavior
This forms the basis of the Task–Capacity Matching Model (TCM).
MUFO is designed as an ontology-based knowledge infrastructure for AI systems.
It structures functional knowledge using:
- Concepts
- Relationships
- Constraints
This enables:
- structured recording
- machine-readable reasoning
- auditable decision processes
- safety boundary enforcement
MUFO complements existing health knowledge systems:
- ICF – International Classification of Functioning
- SNOMED CT – Clinical terminology system
- UMLS – Biomedical terminology integration
MUFO focuses specifically on functional reasoning and decision boundaries.
MUFO is currently under active development as part of the MoveTips Functional Language System (MFLS).
Only conceptual descriptions are currently public.
Detailed ontology structures and reasoning rules are not yet released.
MoveTips Project
https://www.movetips.cn# MUFO
MUFO: MoveTips Unified Functional Ontology — A unified ontology for describing human functional states, constraints, and decision boundaries.
If you use MUFO in research, please cite:
Che, Lei (2026).
MUFO: MoveTips Unified Functional Ontology.
https://github.com/dlehche/MUFO
MUFO is currently under active development.
Only conceptual descriptions are public.
The formal ontology schema and reasoning rules will be released in future versions.