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NUTRIA

NUTRIA is a research project that is developing a system to support the self-care of women with gestational diabetes. We are exploring the challenges faced by women with gestational diabetes in managing their condition, drawing on ethnographic and participatory research with patients, dietitians, doctors, and family members. NUTRIA system will offer tailored meal plans and recommendations and empower women to make informed dietary choices. Moreover, NUTRIA will provide scientific contributions to the areas of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Recommender Systems, and Medical Informatics.

Motivation

Gestational diabetes (GD) is a perinatal condition that can harm both mothers and fetuses if blood sugar levels are uncontrolled, leading to pregnancy complications and health risks. Women with GD need to manage their blood sugar, diet, and activity to prevent these issues, but this can be challenging as they have to learn new eating behaviours like portion control and find appropriate food equivalents. Self-care technologies could help by supporting learning and offering personalized meal plans. The goal of NUTRIA is thus to empower informed eating decisions and provide nutritional education. Dietitians will be able to input nutritional requirements and restrictions on a dedicated web platform. Patients will receive tailored meal plans and recommendations for managing gestational diabetes during pregnancy. The plans will be flexible enough to accommodate practical food choices aligned with the patient's cultural practices, religious beliefs (like avoiding certain foods), and personal food preferences.

Approach

We will start the project by investigating the self-care practices and challenges of women with GD and their dietitians, using ethnographic fieldwork and participatory design activities with dietitians, women with GD, and other relevant stakeholders.

NUTRIA will create and validate a system to support the self-care of pregnant women with gestational diabetes (GD), composed of a mobile app for patients and a web platform for dietitians. NUTRIA’s mobile app will enable women with GD to receive tailored meal plans and nutritional messages/notifications for adopting healthy eating practices. The NUTRIA web platform will enable dietitians to set up the nutritional profile of the patients, craft messages/notifications for patients, and monitor and adjust meal plans remotely.

We will conduct user research and participatory design with patients and dietitians to improve the system and develop more features. Furthermore, we will conduct field trials to evaluate and improve the system, and to analyse the effects and impact of the intervention.

Project Goals

With NUTRIA we plan on addressing the challenges faced by women with gestational diabetes (GD) in managing their condition through proper nutrition. In more depth, our goals are as follows:

  • Understand the challenges of the disease, self-care, and how pregnant women learn to live with gestational diabetes;
  • Engage in participatory design to develop a personalised self-care technology;
  • Create customised meal plans for pregnant women with GD.

Funding

NUTRIA is funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (2022.09373.PTDC).