Digital Nutritional Assessment Tool

营养不良（或营养摄入不足）是英国老年人的一个重要问题，与生活质量下降、功能衰退和健康状况恶化密切相关。在护理院中，超过35%的人受到营养不良的影响，在护理院生活的时间越长，患营养不良的风险就会增加，最短只需2天。该项目将开发一种工具，通过拍照来确定营养摄入量，从而确定营养不良及其风险。先前的研究强调，在健康和社会护理领域，老年人的营养不良记录并不准确，饮食日记极度不准确，还存在工作人员缺乏时间、难以记住所吃的食物或需要营养师解释结果等问题。将食物照片与现有食物信息联系起来意味着可以存储详细的营养摄入量。我们将使用计算机学习将食物照片与食物偏好、身体症状和营养不良风险等重要指标联系起来。食物分类工具将通过手机应用程序发送，该应用程序还将考虑份量和进食频率。通过这种方法，我们将能够将食物摄入与偏好和/或症状联系起来，并确定有害或不受欢迎的食物，以减少老年人的营养不良风险。我们将开发原型工具，并测试它在养老院的人们及其护理人员（包括痴呆症患者）中的接受程度和可用性。

Malnutrition (or insufficient nutrient intake) is a significant issue for older people in the UK, and is strongly associated with poorer quality of life, functional decline and deteriorating health. Over 35% of people in care homes are affected by malnutrition with risk increasing the longer someone lives in care with it taking as little as 2 days to become malnourished. This project will develop a tool to identify malnutrition and its risk through taking photographs to identify nutritional intake. Previous studies have highlighted that malnutrition is not recorded accurately in older people in health and social care with extreme inaccuracies in diet diaries and problems including lack of staff time, difficulty remembering foods eaten, or needing a dietician to interpret the results. Linking food photos to existing food information means that it is possible to store detailed nutrient intake. We will use computer learning to link photographs of food to important measures such as food preference, physical symptoms, and malnutrition risk. The food classification tool will be delivered through a mobile phone app which will also consider portion size and eating frequency. Through this we will be able to link food intake to preferences and/or symptoms and identify foods hazardous or not preferred to decrease malnutrition risk among older people. We will develop the prototype tool and test how acceptable and usable it is in people living in care homes and their care staff, including people living with dementia.