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FoodScan: A New mHealth App for Food Monitoring through the Analysis of Purchase Groceries Receipts (Preprint)


 BACKGROUND
 For the mobile device market there is a large number of applications that allow the control of food to lose weight and manage a healthy diet. However, the vast majority of these apps consume a lot of time by having to introduce food, one by one, for that control.
 
 
 OBJECTIVE
 This work presents a new Android application, FoodScan, aimed at people over 70 and their caregivers, specially those from rural environments or with limited technical knowledge, to manage their food from the items that appear on their grocery receipts in a simple and dynamic way, avoiding the obligation to introduce one by one those foods. The user can scan the grocery receipts, keeping a record of what they have purchased. The application will generate recommendations on what you should eat to follow a healthy diet according to the parameters set. Additionally, everything runs without the need to be connected to the Internet. Data management is done locally and, therefore, personal data is not sent to a remote server to be analyzed, improving the privacy of the proposed solution.
 
 
 METHODS
 Prior to development, different algorithms were tested to expedite the introduction of food into the application and the most suitable for the FoodScan application was selected. Likewise, several options were taken into account to create the knowledge base of food, taking into account dietary recommendations for people over 70 years.
 
 
 RESULTS
 FoodScan stands out for having a friendly and intuitive interface and ease of use. In addition to the development of the application, an evaluation of the level of satisfaction by the users was carried out. The results of the satisfaction survey highlight the ease of installation (93% think it is easy and very easy) and FoodScan handling (66% believe it is easy and very easy). This contributes to loyalty to users. The fact of a simple handling allows its use among people over 70 years, who usually do not have skills with the new technologies, to control healthy habits in their diet.
 
 
 CONCLUSIONS
 When developing an application, it is convenient to take into account the user's needs to adapt to their circumstances. Only if the users perceive the application as simple, friendly and does not take a long time to use, will they be loyal and not abandon their control of the diet.
