Most U.S. hospitals and long term care facilities under 200 beds do not have automated tools to help them manage the myriad tasks of commercial food production. Indeed, many can not afford to employ a registered clinical nutritionist. The objective is to create a centralized system for automating as many functions of a healthcare facility's kitchen and diet office as possible. This system would be maintained at one central location, by nutritional and technical professionals. Healthcare facilities would then obtain access through the Internet. An interactive website would be, created to ultimately include sections such as inventory management, product price comparisons and ordering, recipes, professional advice from registered clinical nutritionists, patient diet analysis, and menu management, to name a few. The central objective will be to lower daily operating costs while freeing up time for on- site food service professionals to educate patients about nutrition. Phase I will focus on the optimal internet access & data storage for this "distributed approach" to automation. The ability to benefit from automation, without the traditional cost of on-site technology and training will break new ground in healthcare food service operations, and this "technical feasibility" is a crucial first step towards that end goal. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: The creation of an interactive website to host diet office functions, as listed above, will be attractive to both managers of healthcare food service operations, as well as vendors who wish to have products and services available to these facilities. Compared to other automation products that provide these types of functions, there will be a very small fee charged to both types of users - managers and vendors. Because of this anticipated low cost, a high volume of users can be expected, generating substantial revenue
