A working mealsituation - innovation against malnutrition

Important results from the project

The overall aim of the project is to prevent malnutrition among the elderly by identifying risks of malnutrition on operational and individual level, and to recommend measures to minimize the risks. These measures should be tailored to the individual and the business. The project has focused on care homes, but realized that elderly living in their own homes must be included in the continuation since it is at home malnutrition primarily arises.

Expected long term effects

The preferred solution is a digital meal coach with different dashboards for different audiences to meet each audience´s specific needs. The target groups are the elderly, relatives, care personnel, operational managers and municipal officials. Measurement will take place both with the help of subjective questionnaires and objective with the help of observations and sensors. This solution will increase the knowledge of nutrition for elderly in all groups, give the care profession higher status, decrease malnutrition among elderly and reduce the community health care costs.

Approach and implementation

The project has included care homes, companies, research institute and universities and more actors in workshops and interviews. The project has looked at the food situation in the two care homes by a day of observation including interviews of the manager, the chef and caring staff, and carried out measurement of the meal situation with Bestic´s Mealtime Quality Index in order to evaluate the method. SP also examined the method mathematically and HKR has carried out an inventory and evaluation of existing quality measurement methods.