Renal Guide - Dialysis Diet Tracker

Daily limit and log
Ai Meal planner

Problem

The ability to maintain a healthy diet while undergoing dialysis is a challenge for most patients. Unlike the general population, dialysis patients must monitor nutrients like potassium, phosphorus, sodium, and fluid intake; exceeding the recommended amount of any of these nutrients can adversely impact the health of a dialysis patient. Furthermore, maintaining such a diet can be challenging to manage daily with most diet tracking applications that are available.

Solution

RenalGuide is a diet tracking application targeted towards individuals undergoing dialysis. RenalGuide allows users to search for specific foods, add the foods to a diet log, and view the impact that each food item can have upon the diet limits of each patient. This application will help to reduce the stress and guesswork that are often required of patients to adhere to their diet, while still maintaining accuracy in the logging of those dietary components.

Technology

RenalGuide was built with a modern web application stack, using the USDA FoodData Central database to pull nutritional information for the foods that are logged within the application. Performance and simplicity was an essential consideration in the development of the application. Quick-add features for common foods were included to allow for the fastest logging of foods to the diet.

Challenges

One of the major challenges within the development of the application was ensuring that the food search was of any utility to the end users. Because the same food items can have multiple values within the database, it was challenging to develop an effective filtering system for the search results. Additionally, the user interface had to be developed to display information regarding the various nutrients of the foods without creating a difficult to read and understand interface.

Outcomes

RenalGuide is an application that was developed with simplicity and effectiveness in mind. The result is an intuitive application with a sleek user interface that can potentially be used daily by patients on

Lessons Learned

Through the development of RenalGuide, we learned about working with datasets like that of the USDA FoodData Central database, as well as how to design user experiences with the features and restrictions of target audiences.

Future Development

In the future, the application will work towards improving the accuracy of the food search results, allowing for the editing of foods that have been logged within the application, and creating insights regarding the diets of the users of the application.