Nutrikids, a Smartphone Application to Improve the Quality of Paediatrical Dietary Assessments: Feasability Study.

Abstract

Collecting accurate food consumption data is challenging for nutrition practitioners. Mobile devices are interesting alternatives to traditional ways of collecting assessments by reducing burden of use. Our objective was to develop and evaluate a mobile application for food intake documentation, targeting particularly the parents of pediatric patients. NutriKids is an application designed to guide users step by step in their assessment by asking relevant questions and taking advantage of the camera function. The quality of nutritional assessment using NutriKids was evaluated through the analysis of food diaries completed during two days under real-life conditions (home use). NutriKids demonstrated to provide satisfying degree of quality in 84% of the reported items. A detailed analysis of quality components highlighted that NutriKids interface could be improved for quantitative estimation and for specific information on added fat or sugar. Besides, a feedback survey highlighted the high acceptability of the application by the participants. These findings demonstrate the potential of this guided approach application. With further development of NutriKids and controlled based assessment with larger populations, we hypothesize that our results would reach statistical significance in all aspects of nutritional assessment quality.