The way we care for the needs of elderly people in aged care needs transforming.

A 2021 study in Australia found that 68% percent of aged care residents are malnourished or at risk of malnutrition, placing them at higher risk of illness and declines in overall health.

This is primarily driven by legacy meal service processes, meaning meals do not meet individual preferences or requirements, and tracking consumption to uphold quality standards at this scale is widely complex.

Meal Vision is transformational technology, allowing centres to optimise consumption for each resident, improving quality of life and reducing anxiety for families.

A 2021 study by the Royal Commission of Aged Care Quality & Safety in Australia found that 68% percent of aged care residents are malnourished or at risk of malnutrition.

The consequences of poor nutrition are significant and often irreversible for older people. Malnutrition is an associated cause of health risks including an increased incidence of falls and fractures, increased time for pressure injuries to heal, and increased risk of infection.

Malnutrition in these facilities is primarily driven by legacy group service processes, meaning residents are served meals that do not meet their individual preferences or requirements.

Unfortunately, tracking food consumption to uphold quality standards at this scale is widely complex and difficult to achieve.

Compass Group, a worldwide provider of food services, supplies over 71 million meals each year to aged care facilities, set out to tackle this critical challenge.

Historically, there was no evidenced based information for nutrition consumption analysis. What analysis was done, was purely manual and only at a group level, meaning there was no intelligence on what each individual resident ate.

Essentially, there’s never been the level of attention needed.

We realised the first step to understanding individual nutrition is understanding consumption, therefore we had to create a way to understand what each individual was being served, the nutritional value of that food, and then what portion of each meal was actually consumed by each individual resident. We would then need to make this information accessible and actionable for aged care workers.

If we could achieve this, we would be able to get in-front of the problem, seeing problems before they became critical.

June 2020.

The catalyst for this innovation was a request for Compass Group Australia to support on a project to improve nutritional outcomes in aged care.

From here we:

Developed our knowledge bank, bringing in design and technology experts to investigate the area of resident nutrition.

We then setup a research team to work with technology companies to design a solution.

Meal Vision TM prototypes were then utilised in a variety of field sprints in a dozen locations across Australia.

June, 2021.

Meal Vision units are deployed in the first full scale trials.

August, 2022.

Meal Vision is fully deployed as a a commercial product.

50 units are built servicing multiple serveries in four large scale locations.

At the heart of Meal Vision are two components: the Meal Vision Scanning Unit and the Meal Vision Ai Platform.

The Meal Vision Scanning Unit is responsible for gathering data and is equipped with features including a high-resolution camera, radio frequency identification, and most importantly, the LiDAR scanner for measuring the food. The data captured by the unit is then fed to the Meal Vision AI Platform hosted on the AWS Cloud, to track consumption.

First, the unit detects which resident the plate belongs to using an RFID tag attached to each plate. The camera then scans the plate to identify the food and calculate its volumes. These figures are then sent to the cloud-based AI model for prediction. After eating, the same procedure is repeated. Lastly, the data is compared and stored in a Data Mart, which is connected to a Tableau dashboard displaying the results.

The Tableau dashboard is analysed by Compass Group staff in real-time to monitor the consumption intake of the residents. They can track the total percentage consumed and food categories to discover the most popular menu items, patterns in the residents’ behaviours and identify which residents require adjustments.

Fifty Meal Vision units have been built since launch, operating in dozens of serveries, catering to hundreds of residents. It is drastically improving the lives and health of the elderly, while also bringing peace of mind to their families.

Key impacts include:

1) Mitigating the risk of malnutrition.

The solution flags food consumption-related warnings, so that Compass Group staff can immediately action the appropriate steps to mitigate risk. These may include enhanced supervision and encouragement at mealtimes, serving dishes that are most popular, and customised meal plans.

2) Assuring families that their loved ones are maintaining a nutritious diet.

Tableau dashboard generates reports, backed by data points, to indicate how family members are consuming food and what their food intake preferences are.

3) Reducing food wastage.

Through analysis of food consumption data, Compass Group staff are able to design more favourable meal plans, allowing them to significantly reduce food waste.

The Royal Commission of Aged Care Quality & Safety in Australia 2021, handed down an extensive list of recommendations for industry transformation. As of 2023, part of the assessment and planning for each resident requires providers to regularly re-assesses each older person’s nutrition, hydration and dining needs and preferences. The assessment must consider:

- what the older person likes to eat and drink

- when the older person likes to eat and drink

- what makes a positive dining experience for the older person

- the older person’s individual and nutritional needs

- issues that impact the older person’s ability to eat and drink.

Meal Vision can play a critical role in enabling the entire sector to achieve these new standards.