Diet ID Integration with Epic Advances Diet as a Critical Vital Sign

Diet ID, a diet quality assessment and nutrition management tool, is now available in Epic's App Market.

DETROIT, MI, USA, November 15, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Diet ID™, a digital platform offering a patented breakthrough in dietary assessment and management, is now available as a Blossom App in the App Market for users of Epic, the premier electronic health record (EHR) system in the United States. The capture of objective diet quality scores by Diet ID can now be handled from within the Epic workflow.

The Diet ID enhancement is a major step toward not only treating diet as a fundamental vital sign, but standardizing its measurement at scale. This standardization is a critical component in diverting chronic disease because we can only manage what we measure.

Diet quality has been established as the leading predictor variable for all-cause mortality and total chronic disease risk in the United States and much of the developed world, with evidence from the Global Burden of Disease study (1), among other sources. In a 2019 opinion piece in the New York Times (2), leading experts noted that poor overall diet quality causes more than 500,000 premature deaths in this country every year. First among the remedies proposed by the authors—including a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture—was the inclusion of nutrition in every patient’s EHR.

A similar stance was adopted by the American Heart Association in a position statement (3) published in 2020. The AHA, citing the critical role of overall diet quality in cardiovascular health, called for the routine assessment of dietary intake in all patient encounters.

Until recently, however, such a proposition has been forestalled by the nature of traditional dietary assessment tools, which are largely dependent on memory and/or time. In contrast, Diet ID’s approach is based on pattern recognition, which is a native aptitude requiring neither memory nor significant time commitment. The Diet ID team has invented, developed, patented, and widely deployed this validated, visual-based method of dietary assessment, which can be completed via any digital interface in as little as 60 seconds with comprehensive results available instantaneously.

"As the leading predictor of health outcomes in the United States today, diet quality should be assessed and addressed with every patient, and captured in every medical record. Diet ID's unique capability plus Epic's reach through the health system make this possible for the first time. This is an exciting and important milestone for nutrition in clinical practice, and the standard of care," says Dexter Shurney, MD, MBA, MPH, Chief Health Equity, Diversity, Inclusion Officer, Adventist Health President, Blue Zones Well-Being Institute.

“Our goal is to make Diet ID’s diet assessment and quality score available as key data points in the EHR. This unique offering within Epic is a truly exciting step,” notes Dr. David Katz, CEO and Founder of Diet ID. “The availability of Diet ID in Epic advances the mission to make diet quality the vital sign it clearly deserves to be. We are doing our part to answer the call—from policy makers and health organizations—to elevate the focus on nutrition in modern healthcare.”

According to this Medscape story (https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/983930), diet has historically been ignored in standard workflows. Author Dr. Neha Pathak writes, "Despite these calls to expand nutrition screening, many health professionals are often stymied by an array of barriers. From time constraints, concerns about lack of training in nutrition counseling, and difficulty administering dietary assessments, healthcare professionals may not have the bandwidth to add another task to busy clinic workflows." Diet ID is purpose-built to fit within clinical workflows to save time and resources while improving patient outcomes.

Diet ID is available in the Epic’s App Market, allowing health systems to add Diet ID’s instant dietary screening tool into their standard workflow. Nutrition data can be posted to a custom vital sign or custom flow sheet. Early adopters of this solution include Corewell Health West, formerly Spectrum Health, and Hartford HealthCare, both of which plan to incorporate Diet ID data within Epic. Dr. Steven Borer, DO, FACC, a cardiologist with Hartford Healthcare Medical Group, says, "Diet ID is a novel and efficient program to rapidly and accurately assess diet quality which we use in our Lifestyle Medicine Program at Hartford HealthCare. This validated score correlates with changes in metabolic parameters and the program also provides a personalized eating plan and a series of challenges to help patients achieve their desired diet. It is exciting that Diet ID will now be integrated with Epic as this will further improve workflow, efficiency, and accessibility for both providers and patients."

“Assessing nutritional insufficiency is showing itself to be the most vital of all vital signs as we aim to bend the curve on rising diet-related chronic diseases,” states Dr. Cate Collings, MD, FACC, MS, Dip ABLM, president of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. She adds, “Having results of a simple diet screening tool in Epic is a huge step forward and makes possible the next step of prescriptive nutritional and lifestyle interventions.”

Epic and App Market are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic System Corporation.

ABOUT DIET ID— Founded in 2016 and headquartered in in Detroit, MI, with a team around the U.S., Diet ID is focused on making dietary assessment a vital sign. Founded by Dr. David L. Katz, lifestyle medicine and nutrition leader and founder of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, Diet ID provides a scientifically valid approach to both understand how people eat and help them improve what and how they eat, one bite at a time. The result is permanent habit change, with a preference for healthful foods. Learn more about Diet ID at https://dietID.com.

1. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67361930041-8/fulltext
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/opinion/food-nutrition-health-care.html
3. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/HCQ.0000000000000094

Press release link: https://www.einpresswire.com/article/600149933/diet-id-integration-with-epic-advances-diet-as-a-critical-vital-sign