Health & Nutrition

Giulia Galasso
Alessandro Lagasca
Giacomo Mariani
Luca Racchetti
Ubiquitous and
Context-aware Computing
Health & Nutrition

In recent years, healthcare systems
around the globe have undergone an
increasing pressure to improve
healthcare services, for
chronic-disease patients as well as the
general population, through
effective prevention and
post-operative care.
Ubiquitous healthcare is an emerging
field of technology that uses a large
number of environmental and
patients’ sensors and actuators to
monitor and improve patients’
physical and mental conditions.
http://infonomics-society.org/IJISR/Ubiquitous%20Healthcare%20Information%20System_Assessment%20of%20its%20Impacts%20to%20Patient%E2%80%99s%20Information.pdf

• Reducing the delay in the communication between
patient and physician
• Reducing the delay between the recording of the
data and its exploitation
• Faster diagnosis
• Reduction in the medium cost
• Improved accuracy in the diagnosis
There are some foundamental objectives in the
Ubiquitous Healthcare Information Systems

The essence of ubiquitous healthcare lies in the creation
of an environment where healthcare is available to
everyone, everywhere without the dependence on time
or location and where technologies enabling ubiquitous
healthcare would not only be
pervasive but also be assimilated flawlessly in daily lives.
With this vision of Ubiquitous healthcare then, tiny
sensors, which can either be worn on (by integrating
them in patient’s clothing); implanted or installed in
patients’ homes and workplaces (such as in furniture,
electrical appliances and construction), are being
designed to collect information on bodily conditions such
as heart rate, blood pressure and even blood and urine
chemical levels. The actuators go further by triggering
actions such as the release of small quantities of
pharmaceuticals into the bloodstream or the electrical
stimulation of brain areas.

Theoretical advantages
• Availability and accessibility of healthcare knowledge
and expertise
• Equality in the availability and accessibility of
services offered by the health system by breaking down
the geographic and temporal limits
• Availability of ubiquitous healthcare services for new
and alternative (non-invasive) medical procedures
• Cost savings for ubiquitous healthcare service
providers and patients in procedural, travel, and claim
processing costs
• Reduced use of traditional emergency services
• Improved non-emergency services
• Decreased time for non-emergency services
• Timely accessibility of critical information in the event
of emergencies
• Increase of general efficiency
• Increase and improvement in patient relationship
management

Possible disadvantages
• Unnecessary information and data overload for
diagnosis
• The data collection with sensors could lead to less
control of own health through regular medical
examination
• The systems must be targeted on patients with a
certain pathology and should not be used on the
entire population because useless and extremely
expensive
• It’s not possible to screen everything and
everyone
• The patient could not be sured about the sensor’s
feedbacks and could still decide to go to the
Emergency Room even without actual need
(Complaiance of the patient).

https://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/health/
https://developer.apple.com/healthkit/

One of the areas being developed within the
systems dell’ubiquitus healthcare is that of
nutrition. The diet is the foundation of health as a
source of all the nutrients and constituents of the
organism (energy substrates, proteins and amino
acids, lipids, trace elements, vitamins, minerals).
It’s so intuitive that monitoring and real-time
analysis of what is from dietary intake is useful
and essential for better health.
Especially in people who need customized diets
such as
gluten-free, obese, diabetic, allergic or intolerant
to certain foods, athletes, pregnant women,
vegetarians and vegans.

Significant benefits arise from being able to capture
dietary or nutritional intake information automatically or
semi-automatically. These include the ability for
individuals to know and understand their nutritional
intake and hence improve their diet and health.
To date, only highly manual processes such as 24 hour
recall, food diaries and food journals have been utilized
which have been overly cumbersome for widespread
adoption.
Emerging informatics, computer vision, mobile
computing and sensor-based approaches are likely to
play a role in further automating the capture of dietary
intake information. In addition there is the increasing
development and prevalence of nutrition fact panel
labeling and further digitization in food industry
production and point-of-sale systems.
https://www.academia.edu/2390233/An_Overview_of_the_State_of_the_Art_of_Automated_Capture_of_Dietary_Intake_Information

The challenge:
for each meal or food item consumed, two pieces of
information would need to be captured automatically
or semi-automatically:
• the exact types of food eaten
• the portion-sizes eaten.
The benefits of a UPC (Universal Product Code),
usually barcodes, are that it unambiguously identifies
the food, is typically accompanied by a nutrition fact
panel and it also can powerfully help to assist the
addressing of the question of portion size eaten. That
is, where the whole amount of a packaged food is
eaten, or the recommended serving, or an estimated
fraction of the packaged food, there then is a simple
step to calculate nutritional intake consumed from that
food.
https://www.academia.edu/2390233/An_Overview_of_the_State_of_the_Art_of_Automated_Capture_of_Dietary_Intake_Information

The “calorie in” measurement remains a wearables industry challenge. Many activity-tracking wristbands integrate
food-logging tools in their mobile apps to record calorie intake, but these functions are too time-consuming and clumsy.
What the fitness-tech space really needs is a breakthrough in calorie-intake tracking, some kind of sensor-laden
wristband that automatically records how many calories we’re consuming in the food we eat.
In the last year, two fit-tech companies claiming breakthroughs in automatic calorie-intake tracking have crawled out of
the crowd-funding woodwork: Airo Health and Healbe.
http://www.techhive.com/article/2110429/wearable-snake-oil-the-search-for-automatic-calorie-intake-tracking-in-fit-tech-wristbands.html

Name: AIRO
Developed by: AIRO Health
Development stage: unknown
Price: 199$
Goal: divine calorie intake through the surface of one’s skin using spectroscopic sensors
How does it work: a LED array shines different wavelengths of light through the skin, while a highly sensitive photo
detector determines which wavelengths have been absorbed, and which have been reflected. The system detects the
optical footprints of what Airo Health describes as metabolites, and from these, the AIRO algorithm can estimate
calorie intake. The company has since shuffled its executive leadership, and has refunded pre-order payments from initial
crowd-funding backers. But its new CEO tells that development continues apace.
http://www.techhive.com/article/2110429/wearable-snake-oil-the-search-for-automatic-calorie-intake-tracking-in-fit-tech-wristbands.html
http://www.getairo.com/

Name: GoBe
Developed by: Healbe
Development stage: post-production
Price: 199$
Goal: automatically tell you how many calories you consume and burn
throughout the day
GoBe is a wristband announced on March 6 in an Indiegogo
crowd-fundingcampaign.DevelopedbyaRussia-basedcompanycalled
Healbe, the GoBe can allegedly “automatically tell you how many
calories you consume and burn throughout the day.” Since the launch
of the campaign, a strong debate about the authenticity of the product
came out. On one hand the scientific community, on the other hand
the company Healbe with its researches. What the scientific community
claims is that there is no scientific literature supporting the possibility to
measure the level of glucose in the blood just thanks to a simple
impedance sensor. And more, even if it were possible, what is totally
against any scientific evidence is the possibility to deduce the calorie
intake from the only glucose value, without taking into account key
factors such as the level of protein, fat or carbohydrate intake.
http://pando.com/2014/03/20/on-indiegogo-a-miracle-health-device-raises-730k-and-a-whole-load-of-red-flags/
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/healbe-gobe-the-only-way-to-automatically-measure-calorie-intake

Name: Prep Pad
Developed by: The Orange Chef Co.
Development stage: available on market
Price: 149.95$
Goal: create balanced meals through beautiful
visualizations of Protein, Carbs, Fats, and more
Prep Pad is the smart food scale that gives you real-time
insight into your food. It consists of an aluminium frame
topped off with a paper composite surface that can be
hygienically wiped down, plus the electronic guts (weight
sensor with +/-1gram accuracy, microcontroller and
BluetoothLEconnectivity).Useittocreatebalancedmeals
through beautiful visualizations of Protein, Carbs, Fats,
and more, with the Countertop app.
The Countertop is availabe only on the Apple store, and it
requires iOS 6.0 or later, and it’s compatible only with 3th
generation or later iPad.
http://www.techhive.com/article/2358626/prep-pad-review-achieve-a-balanced-diet-with-this-smart-food-scale.html
https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/countertop/id763317140?mt=8
http://theorangechef.com/products/prep-pad

How does it work:
The user specifies what foodstuff/liquid they are weighing in the app, either by
manually selecting it within the app, or scanning a product barcode, or there’s also
a voice-capture feature. The app then builds a visualisation of how balanced that
particular combination of meal ingredients is.
The basic idea of the Prep Pad is to give people more control over their eating
habits by visualising the nutrition content of foodstuffs in real-time, allowing the user
to adjust ingredients to achieve a more healthy balance.
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzLwJyqTPGw

Nome: ---
Developed by: Fraunhofer
Development stage: working prototype
Price: low
Goal: rapid testing of food quality
The quality of food is not always as consumers would like
it to be. But a spectrometer will allow them to gage the
quality of food before they buy it. No bigger than a sugar
cube, the device is inexpensive to manufacture and could
one day even be installed in smartphones. In future, all
consumers will need to do is hold their smartphone near
the product in question, activate the corresponding app,
choose the food type from the menu and straight away
the device will make a recommendation. The application is
based on a near infrared spectrometer which measures the
amount of water, sugar, starch, fat and protein present in
the products. The system “looks” several centimeters
below the outer surface of the foodstuffs, which means that
thin packaging film is no problem for the device as it takes
measurements straight through it.http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Safety-Regulation/NIR-food-quality-device-coming-to-a
-smartphone-near-you-Fraunhofer

How does it work:
By shining a broad-bandwidth light on the item
to be tested – for instance a piece of meat.
Depending on the meat’s composition, it will
reflect different wavelengths of light in the near
infrared range with different intensities. The
resulting spectrum tells scientists what amounts
of which substances are present in the foodstuff.
The researchers are also working on creating a
corresponding infrastructure.
They are developing intelligent algorithms that
analyze the recorded spectrums immediately,
compare them with the requirements and then
advise the consumer whether or not to buy the
item.
http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2012/may/rapid-testing-of-food-quality.html

Name: Tellspec
Developed by: Isabel Hoffmann, founder & CEO of
Tellspec
Development stage: Beta-testing after raising 386.392$
on Indiegogo
Price: 250$
Goal: The world’s first handheld device able to scan food
so consumers know more about the ingredients before
they buy or eat the food.
Tellspec is a keyring sized sensor that can tell you
exactly how many calories are in your food simply by
scanning it: the small handheld gadget, which works with
a mobile phone app, contains a spectrometer to analyse
the chemical compounds in food.
From this, its Canadian inventors, Stephen Watson and
Isabel Hoffmann, claim it can ‘tell you the allergens,
chemicals, nutrients, calories, and ingredients in your food’.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2452714/Tellspec-Future-dieting-Gadget-tells-calories-dinner-scanning.html
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tellspec-what-s-in-your-food

The handheld scanner incorporates a miniature
near infrared spectrometer. The internal light
source focuses a beam of light through the front
window into the food. Light reflected from the
sample is then collected through the same
window. This light is then dispersed onto a
micro-mirror device, and measured by an
optimized detection system. This produces a
digital electronic signal, known as a spectrum,
that is characteristic of the food.
VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/108316921
http://tellspec.com/howitworks/

TellSpec’s algorithm takes the spectrum data and
returns it to the user as a report on common allergens,
trans fats,sugars, mercury and other toxic contaminants.
It also provides sodium and calorie counts, providing
TellSpec with appeal for a broader audience. As more
people use the device, more information about
common foods will be added to the algorithm, the
company says. The scanner correctly identifies foods
and ingredients 97.7 percent of the time, according to
the company — which isn’t bad but leaves a 2.3 percent
chance of a potentially fatal allergic reaction.

Baidu Kuaisou is a pair of smart chopsticks equipped
with sensors that can detect certain levels of
contamination in cooking oil, a commodity that is
consistently in demand in China, where oil is seen as a
symbol of wealth since long time ago, and can be
connected to the user’s smartphone via an app that
displays the results.
http://goo.gl/cDNzvC
http://goo.gl/PqSsAi

Name: Kuaisou
Developed by: Baidu
Development stage: working
prototype
Price: ---
Goal: Kuaisou uses a series of sensors
to determine metrics like oil quality,
temperature, PH levels, and even calories, then
transmits that information to an app. A tiny blue
LED at the tip of the chopsticks would give you an
on-sight reading.
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c74nGOT5dNo
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/04/baidu-china-search-engine-smart-chopsticks-food-safety

“In the future, via Baidu Kuaisou, you’ll be able to know the
origin of oil and water and other foods - whether they’ve
gone bad and what sort of nutrition they contain,” says
Robin Li, Baidu Chief. China’s food industry has had more
than its fair share of food scandals, from virus-infected
strawberries to meat painted with inedible pigments to make
itlook more appetizing. Recently, McDonald’s and KFC had
to pull out meat items from their menus after reports
surfaced that the fast-food chains were using rotten meat
from a Chinese supplier.
Zhong Nanshan, a health expert who discovered the SARS
virus in 2003, says that up to 14 million tons of gutter oil
were produced in China last year, with 3.5 million of these
making it to dinner tables. And with huge demand driving
up the cost of edible oil, it’s not uncommon for restaurants
to pinch pennies and use contaminated oil bought from the
black market.
VIDEO:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c74nGOT5dNo

One of the firts molecular sensor that fits in
a hand palm. It’s a tiny spectrometer and
allows you to get instant relevant information
about the chemical make-up of just about
anything around you, sent directly to your
smartphone.
http://www.consumerphysics.com/myscio/scio.htm

Name: SCiO
Developed by: Consumer Physics, Tel Aviv, Israel
Development stage: Pre-order/march 2015 as
shipping date
Price: 249$
Goal: Analyze food, plants, medication, oil and fuels,
plastics and wood. Collect and share data through
future developed application.

Compatibility:
iPhone 4S, 5, 5C, 5S ( iOS5 or later )
iPad (3rd generation or later)
Android based phones ( Android 4.3
or later)
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIFyAOD_E3E
• Get nutritional facts about different kinds of food:
salad dressings, sauces, fruits, cheeses, and much
more.
• See how ripe an Avocado is, through the peel!
• Find out the quality of your cooking oil.
• Know the well being of your plants.
• Analyze soil or hydroponic solutions.
• Authenticate medications or supplements.
• Upload and tag the spectrum of any material on
Earth to our database. Even yourself!
http://www.consumerphysics.com/myscio/technology.htm
What Can I Do With It Today?

Name: iTube
Developed by: Aydogan Ozcan, UCLA Henry Samueli
School of Engineering and Applied Science
Development stage: working prototype
Price: low
Goal: allergens tester
The iTube is a cell phone attachment to detect allergens in
food samples, using the cell phone’s built-in camera, along
with an accompanying smart-phone application that runs a
test with the same high level of sensitivity a laboratory would.
Weighing less than two ounces, the attachment analyzes a
test tube–based allergen-concentration test known as a
colorimetric assay.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/biomedical/imaging/smartphones-as-blood-analyzers-and-allergen-testers

How does it work:
To test for allergens, food samples are initially ground up and
mixed in a test tube with hot water and an extraction
solvent; this mixture is allowed to set for several minutes.
Then, following a step-by-step procedure, the prepared
sample is mixed with a series of other reactive testing
liquids.Theentirepreparationtakesroughly20minutes.When
the sample is ready, it is measured optically for allergen
concentration through the iTube platform, using the cell
phone’scameraandasmartapplicationrunningonthephone.
The kit digitally converts raw images from the cell-phone
camera into concentration measurements detected in the
food samples. And beyond just a “yes” or “no” answer as
to whether allergens are present, the test can also quantify
how much of an allergen is in a sample, in parts per million.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-engineering-researchers-test-241465

Select your food
restriction.
Scan the code of
the product and
wait a few
moments to
verify.
Display the result. If you wanted to
buy a product
that is not good,
it finds one
compatible.
Offers consumers the power to choose in an informed manner what are the foods that best meet their intolerances,
allergies, his food choices or simply his tastes, reading the label is not always 100% transparent.
http://www.geniuschoice.it/

• Lactose intolerance
• Allergy to cow’s milk protein
• Gluten intolerance
• Intolerance to eggs
• Shrimp allergy
• Peanut allergy
• Allergy to fish
http://www.geniuschoice.it/app-intolleranze-allergie/
The food restrictions currently covered by GeniusFood

An app that reads the label for you.
A database covering most food supply.
An algorithm able to detect the presence of the chosen
product ingredients side.
The certainty of information maintained and certified by
nutrition professionals.
The open beta version of the app is both available for
Android and iOS platforms.
http://www.geniuschoice.it/

Ethics and medical deontology
With the introduction of new UBHIS technologies, privacy
risks, social equality issues and new medic
responsabilities have arisen.
• Obtainment, storage and communication of sensitive
data
• Protection from intrusion by third parties (insurance,
pharmaceutical, workplace ...)
• Individual’s body integrity UBHIS devices’ informed
consent (what data is collected and who can access it)
• Doctors liability in a system error situation, while
using UBHIS devices.
• Access to UBHIS services regardless of the
economic and social differences.
• Ubiquitous healthcare can be considered at the same
level of Enforced treatment or a surveillance system?

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