Development and validation of smartphone nutrition application for supporting dietetic professional practice

Abstract

Advancements in technology have allowed for the development of applications for supporting the nutrition care process. The objectives of this study were to develop and validate a nutrition application incorporating the food and nutrtion databases, and to assess the satisfaction of dietitians toward the developed application. Seventy registered dietitians were recruited to evaluate two sets of the food photographs prepared based on Thai food exchange list (Thai FEL) and Thai food based dietary guideline (Thai FBDG) for three consecutive days. The participants estimated and calculated manually using calculators, following by using the application. The participants’ satisfaction indicated acceptance (overall score = 4.43 ± 0.67) and positive impressions toward the application. Both food exchange lists based NDPro applcations resulted in a significant reduction in time usage (p < 0.01). Furthermore, the application could analyze the data accurately indicating its performance as acceptable in terms of reliability and stability. Additionally, the results of energy and macronutrient contents from the Thai FEL based application also significantly differed from those calculated manually (p < 0.05) with 5% difference in fat and 7 - 8% difference in carbohydrate and energy. However, for the Thai FBDG based application, it was required to modify the representative values of some food groups for improving reliability.