Autonomous and easy-to-use tool for monitoring of personal food intake and personalised feedback The goal of the Food Friend project is the development of a food intake monitoring tool, consisting of hardware, software and methodologies, that can be used by care professionals, research institutions or home users to get a better overview of a person’s dietary behavior. Through automatic measurement of eating activity and estimation of the amount of food consumed, the process will be less work intensive compared to traditional tools such as keeping a food diary. This kind of sensor based food intake monitoring is virtually only available in a lab environment and part of the project will focus on making the technology more accessible. Furthermore, there is a strong focus on providing relevant feedback to the user in the form of personalized recommendations and intuitive visualization of the recorded data, the latter which can be helpful for care professionals to get a better insight into the eating behavior.
The Food Friend technology will also be used in three case studies related to the prevention of malnutrition in patients using tube feeding (UC1), monitoring dietary patterns in chronic diseases such as obesity (UC2) and type 2 diabetes (UC3).
IMA will provide automated identification of patients, staff, devices and equipment in the project for reliable collection of patient nutrition data. In addition, IMA’s focus in the project is on data protection compliance in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).