Meal Vision is a breakthrough, creative solution to a growing challenge: the provision of aged care services in Australia. It is the collision of creativity, technology, business and purpose, to solve an existing local problem, and as populations around the world age, a growing global problem.

The aged care sector - a $23.6 billion industry in Australia - is currently facing the growing risk of severe malnutrition amongst its elderly residents.

A 2021 study by the Royal Commission of Aged Care Quality & Safety says the risk of malnutrition is at a staggering 68%. This issue has a significant impact on the wellbeing of the elderly, including a higher risk of illness, slower recovery time and decline in overall health.

Families sending their loved ones to aged care facilities are faced with the devastation of these risks, despite paying up to $21,000AUD per year. On top of this, residents are served meals that do not meet their tracked preferences, leading to large quantities of food wastage. Unfortunately, tracking food consumption to uphold quality standards at this scale has historically been widely complex and difficult to achieve.

The Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, which was established in 2018, has far-reaching implications for the aged care sector in Australia. The commission's findings include recommendations reform the aged care sector including quality nutrition and care standards, and transparency measures.

As a supplied to the Aged Care industry, Compass Group are proactively working to support the improvement of facility care and nutrition, through Meal Vision.

Compass Group Australia, the global food and support services company, is leveraging the power of AI to develop a solution creating Meal Vision. A first-of-its-kind, cloud-based Computer Vision offering that monitors the food consumption of aged care residents.

At the heart of Meal Vision there are two components – the Meal Vision Scanning Unit and the Meal Vision AI Platform. The MealVision 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 is then fed to the MealVision AI Platform hosted on the AWS Cloud, to track consumption.

Refer to the attachments for development process.

Meal vision includes 4 key components as part of its data-driven technology:

1) Residents’ plates are scanned before and after meal service to calculate exactly their food consumption.

2) Resident appetite and consumption are fed into an AWS cloud-based AI platform that tracks and analyses consumption over time to identify where deficiencies in the resident’s diet exist. And identifying residents that require adjustments to their meals.

3) Resident’s consumption is accessible to staff on live dashboards displaying consumption volumes by time of day, meal type, item and ranking the resident’s appetite. This detailed data set alerts staff to those who are at risk of malnutrition, thereby highlighting issues before they progress.

4) Each resident’s data is accessible to their families so they can have peace of mind.

50 Meal Vision units have been built, and are currently being used in over a dozen aged care serveries, catering to hundreds of residents. Meal Vision is revolutionising aged care, tackling the issue of malnutrition headfirst, drastically improving the lives and health of the elderly, while also bringing peace of mind to their families. Meal Vision has not only transformed lives but has created a first-of-its-kind offering in the aged care market for Compass Group.

This is just the start, – as its impact expands, the future of MealVision in aged care looks bright and promising in:

1) Mitigating the risk of malnutrition 

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

3) Reducing food wastage