Healthy Foodie

According to WHO 2018, millions of global population are suffering from NCDs. With specific need of nutrition, meal options approved to be safe for them are very limited. We plan to create a platform that matches “people who suffer from NCDs” with “meals” that nutritiously fit with them. With recipes invented by specialized doctors and nutritionists, we believe our platform can make a different. Initially, we plan to supply the food by only one restaurant as the quality of meal can be easily checked and maintained. In the long term, we plan to conduct cooking workshops for people whose family members are suffering from NCD. And if their cooking skills are qualified, we plan to persuade them to become our sources of meals. Cooking good meals for their family while also make money from those foods. We aim to create a sustainable healthy community where people can take part in.   

The global population trend is moving toward an aging society where populations are more prone to suffer from chronic diseases. According to WHO 2018, noncommunicable diseases(NCDs) are responsible for over 62 percentages of global death. When taking a deeper look into the major causes behind the progression of these diseases, we found that “Eating habits” are the most responsible factors. Doctors’ advice to eat “healthy foods” seems to be not practical when it comes to the reality of urban community where people barely have time to cook or find the right foods. Not to mention the lack of skill to properly cook. With such limited conditions, people mostly end up having convenience, yet non nutritious meals which means NCDs incidence is exponentially increased. Directly interviewing the caregivers of NCDs patients in khon kaen province, Thailand, we found that the issues of finding the right foods for their chronically ill family members, mostly their parents, are truly problematic. And we assume the same for the other parts of Thailand.

NCDs population who are suffering from 2 main problems: 1. Lack of practical information and 2. Lack of time and skill regards cooking good meals.

For lacking of practical information, we found that information provided by doctors regards types of healthy food or the portions of foods suitable for patients can be not very practical. For example, when mentioning about a “handful” of nut. How can we be sure that the amount is really right as the size of fist for each person is different. We believe our platform can solve this problem by providing the right portion of food in each meal. With our highly nutritious ready-to-eat meals, we believe we can solve the problems of our customers. 

Secondly, the lack of time and skill. We believe most population in urban area face this problem. Not only the patients themselves but also their caregivers. The daughters and sons who serve as the primary caregivers have no time to find the right foods or cook for their parents. Not to mention the lack of cooking skill necessarily to maintain healthy eating habits. By supplying the tasty and nutritious food directly to their house. We believe we can solve this problem.

Healthy Foodie product has 2 major components.

1. Platform that matches “people who suffer from NCDs” with “meals” that nutritiously fit with them. The menu will be created by the professional nutritionists and confirmed by the specialized doctors. Initially, a contacted restaurant will be the only supply for the reason of food standard and quality checking. Our platform doesn't only play role as a matchmaker, but also a personal doctor.  We plan to create an algorithm which help decide on which menu to be ordered. We help plan food for an entire month as the result of eating healthy can never be seen overnight. With the insight medical knowledge, we will also give advice regards which special lab numbers to be tracked as an evidence of medical condition improvements. For example, the level of blood sugar in Diabetes patients or glomerular filtration rate (GFR) in kidney disease patients. After receiving food orders from the customers, we will send the notification to the restaurant. When the meals are already cooked, we will deliver them to the customers houses. With completed services, we aim to facilitate our customers as much as possible. 

2. Healthy cooking workshops to improve skills of people in local areas, especially the ones who have family members suffering from NCDs. By taking part in our workshop, their understanding and skill regards cooking healthy foods will be improved. And if they are qualified to cook for our platform, while capable of cooking healthy food for their loved ones, they can make additional income. Receiving supplied foods made by people in local areas, the delivery costs can be dramatically reduced as well.

Our solution provides technologies including bid data analytics coupled with artificial intelligence to personalised their nutritional requirement based on the data base from the reliable resources such as Thai hospital, institute of nutrition, and so on. Therefore, they can acquire adequate nutrition that is suitable for them, avoid the advancement of NCDs. We also plan to use the social networks platform for building up a community of people who are interesting to have a healthier life, we will create content about nutrition and health to educate them, and we will keep update the content regularly. With these integration of technologies, our solution is innovative for solving the healthy cities challenge.

We are developing a new application to be used as a platform to match the NCDs patients or the high-risk people of NCDs with the nutrient-dense foods  that is suitable for them. They can access easily order the food through the application. The nutrition data provided is based on the data from the reliable sources including Thai hospitals, institute of nutrition, kidney centers and many more.

According to the Ministry if Public Health in Thailand and World Health Organization (WHO), non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have become the most causes of death in Thailand with 71% of Thai people deaths. And the major risk factor for NCDs is unhealthy diet. Unfortunately, the lack of effective solution that accessible for the patient is a major obstacle to avoid the risk of having these diseases. Moreover, the price of the clean foods are extremely high which is not quite accessible for the middle and low-income people. Here we developed a new platform that benefit them to eat healthier with good taste and reasonable price. We believe that our solution could build a huge community of people who are concerned about NCDs and encourage more people not only nationally, but globally to be more concerned about this problem.

We are currently working on the application development process. However, we have a plan to be serving 100,000 people in one year and 5,000,000 people in five years by creating the viral contents to enhance user engagement and make this platform accessible to the general users. Therefore this will help people to avoid risks of NCDs and encourage them to be more concerned about health.

With our passion to make people live happily with healthier life and avoid risk factors of having NCDs. In the next year, our platform will be serving more than 100,000 Thai people, they can access the good taste food with high nutrition that suitable for them. Plus, they will able to get more knowledge delivered from our platform about how to avoid NCDs, how to select food for themselves, and also how to cook healthier food with good taste so that they can teach the other with our given knowledge. We have a plan to expand our platform to other countries including Malaysia, Singapore and CLMV. Therefore, for the next five year, our goal is to be serving more than 5,000,000 people including Thai people ad foreigners.

The major barriers for our team to accomplish our goals are inadequate finances to completed our platform and there also need to have more professional technicians, nutritionists, and many more potential partners to support our project.

Our team has plan to make collaboration with Thai hospitals, university innovation hubs and more. We will also pitch our project to the investors in many upcoming events.

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3 of full-time staffs

      Our team composed of 2 medical students who have skills in nutritional assessment and medical science. We also have a strong relationship with famous medical schools in Thailand that are ready to help us promote and launch our platform to the customer segments; the patients with chronic kidney disease and hypertension, the people who want to prevent diseases. Another one staff is a graduate student in medical biochemistry and molecular biology who has a good knowledge in micronutrition. We also have consultants in both business marketing and medical field

    Innovation hub KhonKean university and Mahidol university. They are organizations that will help propel students’ business model into the real big market. We also have the relation with the Faculty of medicine, KhonKaen university that is ready to help us develop nutrition program and support us launching platform to the patients.  

The customers will be able to access food that suit for them in both price and nutrition via our application.

Our customers are patients with NCD and normal people who want to prevent NCD by eating healthy food.

The application will be useful for the patients, the restaurants in earning income from selling food, and the government in reducing medical treatment cost to pay for NCD patients’ treatment.

The customer will be able to order good nutrition food from the restaurant near to them via our application. Then we will pick up some food and send it to the customer.

Our platform will earn revenue from advertisement fee, service charge in delivery, recipe selling from both patients and restaurants.

We will receive money from Innovation hub KhonKean and Mahidol university to develop application and do marketing plans.

If our team receive the AI innovations Prize, we will use it to develop a precision matching algorithm. As mentioned in the solution part, we aim to function as both matchmaker and personal doctor. In order to make the most suitable match between customers and meals, we should know our customers’ medical condition very well. Beyond general nutritional requirements for each NCDs patient, we should also take other specific important factors into account. For example, food-medicine interaction shouldn’t be ignored as certain types of medicine shouldn’t be taken with certain types of foods. Genetic susceptibility for each disease is also very specific and should be taken into consideration, or some customers may be allergic to certain types of foods. With the application of AI system, I believe the complexity of precision matching can be systematically managed. 

Our team wants to apply for Innospark Ventures Prize because we plan to use AI in developing a precision matching algorithm. As mentioned in the solution part, we aim to function as both matchmaker and personal doctor. In order to make the most suitable match between customers and meals, we should know our customers’ medical condition very well. Beyond general nutritional requirements for each NCDs patient, we should also take other specific important factors into account. For example, food-medicine interaction shouldn’t be ignored as certain types of medicine shouldn’t be taken with certain types of foods. Genetic susceptibility for each disease is also very specific and should be taken into consideration, or some customers may be allergic to certain types of foods. With the application of AI system, I believe the complexity of precision matching can be systematically managed.