Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics creates new online program to improve quality care for patients

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has created a unique web application platform with tools to help registered dietitian nutritionists provide the highest-quality care for patients and clients, track outcomes of their interventions, conduct research in important areas of nutrition science and contribute to a national quality registry.

The new online program - available free to Academy members - is called ANDHII: the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Health Informatics Infrastructure (http://www.andhii.org).

"ANDHII provides dietetics practitioners with tools to track and report outcomes for individual patients and for their practice as a whole," said registered dietitian nutritionist and Academy President Sonja L. Connor.

"Using the Nutrition Care Process Terminology Matrix to anticipate terms, ANDHII makes the Academy's Nutrition Care Process more accessible, leading to more effective and efficient care, as well as collection of comprehensive data and the outcomes of our treatment," Connor said.

The Nutrition Care Process is a systematic approach to providing high-quality nutrition care, consisting of four steps: Nutrition Assessment, Diagnosis, Intervention and Monitoring/Evaluation. "Use of a care process provides a framework for the registered dietitian nutritionist to individualize care, taking into account the patient's needs and values and using the best evidence to make decisions," Connor said.

ANDHII guides dietetics practitioners through each step of the Nutrition Care Process, collecting impact data that can be used in public policy and quality improvement research.

"ANDHII's chart and report builders allow dietetics practitioners to instantly create graphs and spreadsheets that display changes in patient and client outcomes over time, along with dietary intake information and nutrition interventions. Moreover, ANDHII will provide customizable visit reports that translate data into easy-to-read progress notes that save valuable time," Connor said.

"ANDHII will play a key role in nationwide research initiatives in areas such as malnutrition diagnosis, evidence-based practice guideline implementation and comparative effectiveness research," Connor said.