Hospital nutritional menu customization system integrated with web-based technology

Abstract

Background: Hospitals aimed to serve their patients with the best medical care services and saving lives. Yet, while most at-tention and financial cost are spent on the medical investigation, purchasing the latest technology and machines, the food and nutrition provided to patients are having less concern. Food consumed is one of the important factors that affect patient body health recovery. Majority of the hospitalized patients are dependent on the hospital food as their nutritional resources. Problem: A nutritious, wholesome and well-balanced meal can essentially increase patient’s rate of recovery without using the unnecessary nutritional supplement. However, majority hospital serves the patient with the same meal which does not suit every patient’s body condition. Therefore, the patient is unable to obtain enough nutrition to support body health and recovery. This may not bring big affection to the patient who are short-term hospitalization but to those who are long term hospitalized or having serious health problems. Also, the traditional way of taking the order lead to several problems, including patient inconvenience and data lost. Objective: In this paper, a hospital nutritional menu customization system has been proposed to resolve the mentioned prob-lems. The proposed system is designed for hospital-use to allow the patient to customize their meal based on their food prefer-ence, food portion and nutritional needs. This system aims to solve the problem of the existing manual paper-based food ordering system and increases the efficiency as well as the data accuracy.