* 30 August 2022 *
Food is an important part of life, providing nourishment for mind and body. It is especially important in aged care where it is something that residents look forward to each day, and maintaining good nourishment can become more difficult as we age.
Our food services provider, Medirest, has developed new technology to help residential aged care optimise resident nutrition. It is called Meal Vision(TM) and it has multiple goals, to:
- Accurately record the nutritional intake of each individual resident
- Spot any individual trends, such as eating more or less than usual
- Provide data so that meals can be better tailored to the needs of the residents, and to
- Monitor that meals are served at the correct temperature
We have been running a trial of Meal Vision at Vasey RSL Care Brighton East, Kamesburgh, and we aim to have it in place across all our aged care homes within the next few weeks.
How Meal Vision works
The Meal Vision scanning device is used to scan each meal and deliver it to the specific resident, and then to scan the plate when the resident has finished with it. This system is not only able to determine how much the resident has eaten, but how much they have eaten of each item on their plate. Meal Vision uses artificial intelligence to continually learn and add to the data gathered.
After a few months, the system will have gathered enough data to begin providing useful reports. This will be of great assistance to us as we care for your loved ones. If you are ever concerned about their diet or the amount they are eating, this system will enable us to look at the data that has been collected, and together with the residents’ regular weight data, will be helpful in addressing any issues via the resident’s diet as the initial response.
It is expected that after Meal Vision has been in place for a year, with all recipes and nutritional data in the system from each season, we will have access to more detailed information that will allow us to provide individual support for residents’ nutrition and enable us to tailor the daily menu to ensure residents are being served the foods they enjoy.
Another benefit is that it will allow us to monitor for allergens.
Before being served to the resident, Meal Vision scans the food, weighs it and checks the temperature. After the resident has finished eating, their plate goes back onto the meal scanner so that Meal Vision can work out exactly what the resident has consumed. The information is recorded for each resident so that we can access the information both for individual residents and for all residents combined.
Medirest has designed the system to minimise additional work for staff, estimating less than three seconds extra per resident per meal will be required. The main difference for staff is that each meal is tailored to the individual resident and the meal cannot be given to another resident.
No Difference for Residents
The only thing residents may notice if they happen to be seated facing towards the food serving area, is that each meal will be placed briefly onto the Meal Vision scanning device before and after being served.
From a clinical perspective, once past the learning stage, Meal Vision will give accurate information about each individual resident’s eating patterns so that if a resident is eating more than usual or less than usual, this can be followed up with their care team to see what the cause might be.
“Food is an important part of our lives and improving the enjoyment and nutrition for residents are both important goals for our organisation,” says Janna Voloshin, CEO. “At Vasey RSL Care, we are committed to evidence-based practice across all aspects of resident care and are excited to be at the forefront of this new innovation, which has the potential to make dining more enjoyable for residents, improve their nutrition and spot health changes earlier.”