Development of an Institution Specific Mobile App for Nutrition Support Services

Objective - To develop a user-friendly dietary assessment Mobile App for use at Sri Ramachandra Medical Centre, Chennai, India, enabling quick access to dietitians, connected to Hospital Management Information System (HMIS). Methods - An IT driven study was carried out at Sri Ramachandra Medical Centre, Chennai, India. The Development of the app was carried out in 6 steps consisting of - Nutritional Screening for patients incorporating existing nutritional risk screening tool of our institution, Estimation of individualized Nutritional requirement, Diet Plan recommended for individual, connecting it with Diet Kitchen to initiate Diet supply, Evaluating Dietary Intake using 24hr. dietary recall and provision of providing Discharge Summary instantly at the time of patient discharge which will contain all the information related to the diet for better health of patient in future. Findings – The app, which has been connected to the HMIS consists of six steps. In the first step nutritional screening will be done based on the scoring system, followed by which an individualized dietary plan will be recommended and communicated to the hospital diet kitchen through hospital management information system for initiation of an appropriate diet supply. The app also designed in such a way to facilitate assessment of nutrient intake through 24 hr recall of dietary intake from the patient and enable to modify any specific needs. At the time of discharge of the patient, discharge dietary advice and plan will also be provided to the patient, as the app has dietary advice information for many disease conditions, and there is scope for further enhancement of the features. Novelty – The currently developed “Diet App” is the first of its kind in being indigenous and institution specific. There are multiple apps which are diet based but the developed “Diet App” is unique, which is incorporating “All in One” starting from Nutritional Screening till provision of Discharge Summary. The app also facilitate connection with Diet Kitchen for effective diet supply and data retrievable is being controlled through HMIS. Keywords: ­ Mobile App, Nutritional Screening, Diet Plan, Dietary Recall, Digitalization