Senior Design Projects

ECS193 A/B Winter & Spring 2021

Living Light Living Well (LLLW) Food and Activity Tracker/App

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Cathy Deimeke, MBA, RD
UC Davis Health, Health Management and Education

Project's details

Living Light Living Well (LLLW) Food and Activity Tracker/App
UC Davis Health’s department of Health Management and Education (HME) offers an intensive year-long behavior-change weight management program based on the Center for Disease Control’s Diabetes Prevention Program (CDC DPP).

Part of the program’s activities are connecting participants to mindful behaviors relating to diet and exercise. Currently, participants track food intake on an app of their choice or log their intake using paper journals. Dietitians then have to log into the app or assess print outs or paper journals inserting comments and suggestions, providing valuable feedback to ensure the success of the patient’s weight loss journey.

To assist patients in determining accurate calorie counts for either their paper journals or confirm on apps (in which the data is often crowd-sourced), a copy of Calorie King’s Calorie, Fat and Carbohydrate Counter books is distributed to patients. The book has more than 17,000 food listings, color-coded listings, images and a unique eating out section. Patients also receive a blue tooth enabled scale.
Students working on this project will partner with HME and Calorie King. Calorie King offers the ability for organizations to partner with them to use their database for a customized app. https://www.calorieking.com/us/en/developers/food-api/
The benefits of collaborating with Calorie King would result in an app featuring a database that is continually updated to “meet the needs of health professionals and consumers alike.” The goal of a customized LLLW app would be to feature not only a deep database, but customizable options for various eating plans; areas to insert comments/feedback as the dietitian evaluates food records for the users; EMR compatibility; and HIPAA compliant.
A customized app for UC Davis Health would feature the following:
• A HIPAA compliant app, increasing security and privacy between the patient and nutrition professional
• An app that is compatible with Epic
• An app that can register vitals from blue tooth scales, for example
• A tool for users that has a broad and accurate food database
• A feature that would offer space for comments and feedback from the dietitian or provider
• The ability to customize eating plans and implement guidelines (such as a sodium-restricted diet; carb counting goals; bariatric diet guidelines or the DASH diet) which would extend the use of the app to specialty clinics beyond HME, such as bariatrics, nephrology, heart failure, transplant and endocrinology.
The ideal team will have experience with database APIs (retrieving data), and app development
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30-60 min weekly or more
Client wishes to keep IP of the project
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