Poor diet increases the risk of a range of diseases, making the prevention and management of conditions related to poor nutrition as crucial as ever – but sometimes, providing routine provision of basic nutrition can be complicated. With the lack of time to give practical nutrition advice and appropriately assess patient diets, we break down how myfood24 healthcare can help improve nutritional care provision for patients.
It’s known that eating a healthy and balanced diet is essential for good health to help prevent and manage- disease. However, data provided by Public Health England show that two-thirds of the UK population are overweight or obese, and that poor diets are one of the leading causes of disease, including cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
The impact of poor diet on people’s health means it’s imperative for healthcare professionals to provide essential evidence-based nutrition advice and effectively monitor dietary and nutritional intake to improve patient health outcomes.
Yet for many healthcare professionals, there are many challenges to delivering effective nutrition and dietary care.
A lack of consultation time, increased admin responsibilities, and a surge in appointments impact the provision of routine nutrition for patients and sometimes seems unattainable.
That’s where myfood24 healthcare comes in.
myfood24 is a digital dietary monitoring solution, designed to improve the visibility of patients’ nutritional intake for healthcare professionals and patients alike. In line with NICE guidelines recommending dietary monitoring and advice [including NG28, PH35, CG189], myfood24 can provide HCPs with unique insights into patient dietary habits to facilitate conversations about diet, and enable dietary self-monitoring by patients using the food diary app.
Without the barrier of time constraints linked to manually assessing food and nutrient intake, myfood24 healthcare is a unique software aiming to help reduce complications linked to poor nutrition and reduce rates of diet-related diseases through better monitoring and tracking of nutritional intake.
Read on to see the five ways myfood24 healthcare can help counteract the common problems faced by healthcare professionals to improve the nutritional provision of patients.
Saves time
For patients with diet-related diseases or conditions, it’s important to understand diet and nutrition intake. To do this, dietitians, nutritionists, GPs, and other clinicians may need to conduct a diet history to understand their patient’s dietary habits over time.
However, myfood24’s digital solution can help by offering a patient-completed food diary that can be submitted before the appointment, eliminating the need to conduct a diet history within consultation times as the patient’s dietary information is already on hand, and cuts down admin time.
myfood24 healthcare comprises an innate patient-facing app that patients use to self-complete food diaries to record their dietary intake. Patients can search for foods using our robust database embedded into the app, containing over 80,000 food items found in the nation’s leading supermarkets, coffee shops, fast-food outlets, restaurant chains and food delivery services.
Once a patient submits a diary, their nutritional intake is instantly calculated and automatically shared with the healthcare professional, displaying a full nutritional composition breakdown of a patient’s nutritional intake of up to 121 micro-and macro-nutrients, providing complete visibility of patient diets.
Available to view remotely and download anytime, anywhere; healthcare professionals can use the automatically generated in-depth reports to monitor patient diets accurately overtime prior to appointments, so there’s less need to arrange additional and unnecessary consultations. Professionals can better utilise the consultation time they do have to support patients and deliver effective nutrition support.
Supporting prevention and health literacy
Unlike other solutions, myfood24 equips both healthcare professionals and patients with a dietary monitoring tool that provides unique insights into patient dietary habits to help prevent and manage conditions to support a range of patients.
The engaging and informative outputs instantly calculated by myfood24 gives healthcare professionals a broader understanding of what patients are consuming over time to see a sustained pattern of unhealthy habits which could potentially lead to chronic disease, allowing professionals to step in to intervene at the right time and give informative nutrition advice.
Not only can myfood24 encourage essential nutritional practices and improve nutrition monitoring to patients from professionals, but myfood24 also strives to improve patients’ health literacy.
UK statistics show that 42% of working-age adults cannot comprehend health information and rises to 62% when numerical skills are required. It can leave many people feeling overwhelmed with healthcare information and affects their ability to fully take control of their health.
myfood24 healthcare aims to empower patients to better understand the nutritional value of the food they consume and how this can have an impact on their dietary goals. By incorporating easy-to-read and interactive reports on the patient-facing app, patients can view their dietary and nutritional intake in a clear and simple way. Patients can feel more confident and empowered to take charge of their health to make better, more informed choices to support better self-management which could help improve their health now and in the future.
Adapting to the needs of the patient
Not all patients are the same. Each person can have different nutritional needs depending of different factors including: age, gender, genetics and particularly those living with conditions, such as cancer, diabetes and malnutrition.
With that in mind, myfood24 is designed to allow healthcare professionals to provide personalised nutrition support by tailoring the nutrient recommendations for each patient, better supporting those who may need more complex dietary and nutritional support.
Professionals can adjust targets for up to 35 nutrients, vitamins, and minerals to encourage patients to consume foods that are within an appropriate nutritional range for their dietary needs. Once a patient submits a diary, both patients and healthcare professionals can monitor progress against targets over time using easy-to-read reports to encourage patients to learn more about what they are consuming and make better dietary choices.
Co-ordinating effective nutrition plans
Basic nutrition advice from healthcare professionals is vital for patients in supporting the prevention or management of conditions; but with limited time to deliver specialist advice during consultation times, many patients may struggle to know exactly what foods to consume or not consume.
Often, meal planning is a helpful solution to get patients on track and has been established as a valuable tool for improving diet quality according to some research, linking to increased food variety and better dietary quality.
myfood24’s meal planning feature can take the hassle away from patients and offers an opportunity for healthcare professionals to effectively improve diet quality and nutritional provision using meal plans.
Our meal plan function allows professionals to customise meal plans for patients based on their nutritional needs and includes a series of ready-to-use meal plan templates to provide fast support.
Facilitate discussions on the importance of diet and nutrition
As outlined by NICE guidelines [CG32], “all healthcare professionals who are directly involved in patient care should receive education and training, relevant to their post, on the importance of providing adequate nutrition,” to cover the nutritional needs and indications for nutrition support.
When it comes to the prevention and management of diet-related disease, assessing eating patterns and nutritional intake is an important step to take before providing effective nutrition care. Research shows that lack of in-depth nutrition training and time constraints can act as barriers for healthcare professionals, particularly doctors. This can lead to a lack of confidence and difficulty with providing nutritional advice.
Developed by a team of nutritionists, myfood24 healthcare can facilitate discussions with patients to start the conversation about the importance of diet and nutrition and how it can benefit their health. Both parties can look at and discuss the generated results together in real-time using the easy-to-read reports as a reference point to begin implementing effective nutrition provision for patients.
Built on evidence-based methodologies and validated by academic experts against independent nutrient biomarkers to ensure accuracy, myfood24 healthcare can be used in a range of healthcare settings to support patient care.
If you’d like to try myfood24 healthcare or have any questions about our software, get in touch with us, and a member of our team will be happy to help.