Guiding treatment for individuals with eating disorders and dementia using masticatory efficiency

咀嚼效率，即将食物分解成更小块的能力，与营养摄入，身体健康和生活质量直接相关。健康状况可能导致肌肉无力，因此许多人的咀嚼效率降低。两个这样的群体包括经历过长期饮食失调的人和患有痴呆症的人。目前，咀嚼效率被医疗保健服务所忽视，没有长期的治疗计划来帮助预防或改善恶化。因此，本可预防的过早恶化正在导致严重的负面影响。个人正在经历与寿命缩短、生活质量下降和社会孤立有关的身心健康下降。他们所爱的人也承受着巨大的身心压力。这些群体中的服务用户报告说，他们感到被医疗保健服务遗忘和忽视。我们提出了一个解决方案来帮助解决这个问题。我们的新系统将为用户提供一个简单，方便，非侵入性的解决方案，以远程测量他们的咀嚼效率从自己的家舒适。该技术将通过要求用户咀嚼标准化食物（例如，胡萝卜），然后将食物吐入带有标记网格的容器中。然后，容器的简单照片可以上传到网站（由用户或他们的护理人员），该网站将自动计算用户的咀嚼效率并提供定制的治疗计划。他们的计划将包括一套物理治疗练习和食物（根据他们吃的挑战性分类），建议改善他们的肌肉力量，以提高咀嚼效率。随着用户的咀嚼改善，推荐的锻炼和食物将更新，以促进进一步的改善。我们认识到确保医疗保健解决方案真正满足服务用户需求的重要性。因此，我们将从项目一开始就与三个关键用户群体开展一系列研讨会：有进食障碍和痴呆症生活经历的个人，他们的照顾者和亲人，以及医疗保健专业人员。与服务用户的这种接触将在整个项目期间继续进行，包括原型的开发。具体而言，他们的反馈将用于推动最终干预措施的设计和完善，以确保其符合他们的要求，例如，除了改善服务用户及其亲人的健康状况外，这种具有成本效益的远程医疗保健解决方案还可以显著提高医疗保健效率，减少负担过重的医疗保健服务的时间和财务成本。

Chewing efficiency, i.e. the ability to break foods down into smaller pieces, is directly linked to nutritional intake, physical well-being, and quality of life. Health conditions can lead to muscle weakness, and as a consequence many individuals experience reduced chewing efficiency. Two such groups include individuals who have experienced a long-term eating disorder and individuals with dementia. At the moment, chewing efficiency is overlooked by the healthcare services, with no long-term treatment plans to help prevent or improve deterioration. As a consequence, preventable premature deterioration is leading to significant negative impacts. Individuals are experiencing decreased physical and psychological well-being linked to shorter lifespan, decreased quality of life, and social isolation. Their loved ones also experience significant physical and mental stress. Service users in these groups report feeling forgotten and overlooked by the healthcare service. We propose a solution to help address this.Our novel system will provide users with a simple, accessible, non-invasive solution to remotely measure their chewing efficiency from the comfort of their own home. The technology will work by asking users to chew a standardised food (e.g., carrot) before spitting the food into a container with a marked grid. A simple photograph of the container can then be uploaded to the website (by the user or their carer) which will automatically calculate the user's chewing efficiency and provide their tailored treatment plan. Their plan will include a set of physical therapy exercises and foods (classified by how challenging they are to eat) recommended for improving their muscle strength to increase chewing efficiency. As the user's chewing improves, the recommended exercises and foods will update to facilitate further improvement. We recognise the importance of ensuring that healthcare solutions truly meet service users' needs. Therefore, we will be conducting a series of workshops with three key user-groups from the very start of the project: individuals with lived experience of eating disorders and dementia, their carers and loved ones, and healthcare professionals. This engagement with service users will continue throughout the project including the development of the prototype. Specifically, their feedback will be used to drive the design and refinement of the final intervention to ensure it meets their requirements, e.g., in regards to functionality, usability and privacy.In addition to improving well-being for service users and their loved ones, this cost-effective remote healthcare solution could significantly improve healthcare efficiency with reduced time and financial costs for overburdened healthcare services.