Lewisham Hospital

In this case study, Jennifer Robison, Specialist Adult and Paediatric Cystic Fibrosis Dietitian at Lewisham Hospital* in London, UK discusses the challenges in providing detailed nutrition information to cystic fibrosis patients and outlines why Lewisham Hospital has benefited from their partnership with Nutritics.

Lewisham Hospital is focused on developing a culture of high performance and complete patient satisfaction. Their previous nutrition analysis software lacked details on foods and the team were increasingly spending a significant amount of time inputting the nutritional values for missing foods manually.

They required a modern solution with a larger food database that could easily integrate with the hospital’s existing IT systems.
They chose Nutritics due to the range of functionality, large up-to-date food databases, portion size pictures and ease of use of the product. The team feel they can trust both the information provided and the Nutritics team behind it.

Jennifer regularly completes in-depth nutrition analysis with her patients, asking them to track consumption for seven days. Being able to identify exactly what her patients are eating is crucial in giving more explicit and accurate dietary advice.

“Yet, the hospital’s previous nutrition analysis software was an old-fashioned program. The food search was increasingly lacking current foods, so I would eventually enter food products myself. They didn’t even have such things as blueberries,” Jennifer recalls. Analysing hundreds of food diaries became increasingly more tedious and manual.

Finding old reports to map a patient’s journey was challenging as well. Once a report had been archived, it was difficult to retrieve.

The Hospital conducted a comprehensive review of the market to find a suitable replacement. After trialling various software options, they quickly acknowledged that Nutritics was the leading solution available to meet their needs.
“Nutritics has everything and keeps increasing its range of features. Generally, it’s much, much better and more up-to-date than things we used in the past.”

In addition, Nutritics offered an API for easy integration with the hospital’s existing IT systems. A lot of alternatives were not able to offer this.

“The portion sizes are helpful and the pictorial portion sizes are a really good feature.” It helps patients to explain exactly how much they have been eating of a certain food. On the other hand, Jennifer herself uses the feature to further illustrate her dietary advice. The nutrient requirement guidelines are another key benefit for the hospital.

“Basically, using Nutritics makes my job better,” Jennifer highlights. When completing her analysis, she can now refer back to the patient’s report from the previous period as it is logged in the system. “It’s good that you can log in to each patient and update it as you go,” she adds.

For example, patients who invent their own high energy milkshakes make it difficult for Jennifer prescribe the correct amount of CREON**. As Nutritics is web-based, Jennifer can access it from anywhere and by reviewing the analysis results in real time, she can immediately understand the detailed nutrient content and give her patients a better idea of how much CREON they need.

“Overall, Nutritics provides better insights on where to focus on with a patient and gives much more powerful and targeted advice. We look forward to continuing to leverage their software to provide the best possible service to our patients.”

If you would like to learn more about Lewisham Hospital and their Respiratory Services, have a look at their website.

*Lewisham Hospital is a part of the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust in London. The Trust also manages Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Greenwich and health centres across South East London.
**CREON is a prescription medicine used to treat people who cannot digest food normally because their pancreas does not make enough enzymes due to cystic fibrosis, swelling of the pancreas that lasts a long time (chronic pancreatitis), removal of some or all of the pancreas (pancreatectomy), or other conditions. Reference: CREON. North Chicago, IL: AbbVie Inc.