When USF graduate student Jay Hiteshkumar Jariwala volunteered to hand out food for an NGO in Gujarat, India, he didn鈥檛 know the experience would inspire an app to help patients use food as medicine.
MyFoodRx, the app Jariwala created, supports patients of Tampa General Hospital鈥檚 Tampa Well Food Pharmacy by generating customized recipes based on their health conditions and the foods they bring home from the food pharmacy. It focuses largely on those who have been diagnosed with hypertension, diabetes, prediabetes and obesity.
The idea grew from his experience in India and his interactions with a USF professor who is developing digital health technology.
鈥淭his app is designed to give you personalized approach to maximize the benefits of using food as medicine to improve your health,鈥� he said.
Although it鈥檚 still in development, MyFoodRx will be tested by a group of patients after further refinements from medical experts.
Once finalized, Jariwala hopes it not only has an impact on the health of patients using the food pharmacy, but that it can also appeal to a broader audience of people who want to improve their health and understanding of how food impacts the body.
Creating impact becomes rewarding
Jariwala was approached by a friend to volunteer to hand out food through a non-governmental organization near his home in Gujarat, India.
鈥淚 wasn鈥檛 very active in those activities, but some of my friends were, and one day I just went with them,鈥� he said. 鈥淥ne of my friends asked, 鈥楧o you want to come with me? I'm going for this NGO, and we are handing out food to some people.鈥� So, I thought, 鈥楲et's do it. Why not?鈥欌��
The experience moved him.
鈥淭hat experience really hit me,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 felt happy, like I did something good that day. That's how these things started.鈥�
A few years later, at USF鈥檚 Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing, he met Assistant Professor John Templeton, who also runs the school鈥檚 Smarter Health by Integrating, Enabling and Linking Devices (SHIELD) Lab. The SHIELD Lab focuses on developing smarter health by integrating, enabling and linking devices with projects in public health, cancer, biomechanics, cardiology, neurology and more.
Templeton encouraged Jariwala to create the app for a class project. And then the project grew.
Jariwala collaborated with experts across USF. He worked with Associate Professor Jennifer Bleck and Professor Rita DeBate from the College of Public Health and partnered with assistant professors Seungbae Kim and Julia Woodward from the Bellini College. Each provided important insights. Templeton, Kim and Woodward also were on Jariwala鈥檚 thesis committee.
Nearing app launch
When the app launches, patients of the Tampa Well Food Pharmacy at Tampa General Hospital, along with those facing food insecurity visiting other Tampa Well locations, will be able to download and sign into the app on their phone to begin using it.
鈥淭his app will be a supplemental tool for patients of the food pharmacy,鈥� he said. 鈥淲ith the help of this app, they can enter and log everything that they have at home, the food they got from the food bank and about their health conditions and health data.鈥�
After logging basic information about their health, diet and food preferences, patients receive a custom meal plan tailored to their diagnosis. Patients are also asked about what kinds of cuisines they prefer: American, Italian, Indian, Mexican, Chinese and others, generating recipes that they are more likely to enjoy.
鈥淎ll of these things piece together to give them the personalized diet plan for their specific category that they fall into,鈥� Jariwala said.
Using health categories to shape custom diet plans
The app asks patients which of the four categories 鈥� hypertension, diabetes, prediabetes and obesity 鈥� match their diagnosis. This helps tailor the types of menus and education the app will deliver to the patient. On the back end of the app鈥檚 programming, Jariwala incorporated several scientifically backed diet plans to address the different conditions the app targets.
To show its full functionality, Jariwala started a demonstration.
He creates the profile of a diabetic patient, and the app begins its educational instruction about how to portion a plate of food for dinner. A key component to using the app is that it won鈥檛 allow the user to fast forward or skip through the processes.
鈥淪o as a part of this assessment, they don't skip anything about their meal plan, and it's important for them to understand what they are getting into,鈥� Jariwala said of the instruction. 鈥淭hey can't really skip the video or move ahead until they finish. It is important that they walk through the entire video first in order to understand their meal plan and then get into the app, rather than they just say, 鈥極K, let me skip through everything and use the app directly.鈥欌��
In generating the healthy recipes with the available foods from the food pantry, the app pulls from a third-party provider with thousands of stored recipes.
鈥淚t prioritizes items to be used from the food pharmacies first, items that are expiring first, so we are not wasting the food, as well.鈥�
To the app store and beyond
Jariwala will graduate in December and already has a position lined up as a front-end engineer with Dapper Labs, where he鈥檒l focus on building user-facing features such as interfaces, visual elements and overall user experience. He also hopes to continue contributing to the app as other students take over the project and begin integrating an artificial intelligence component.
鈥淭hat module was part of my class and isn鈥檛 activated yet,鈥� Jariwala said of the AI component. 鈥淚t鈥檚 part of some of the things we want to change and work on later on.鈥�
The AI portion, once finished, will allow for more interaction between the patient and app in understandingtheir health and discussing the different recipes. It鈥檚 all part of how Jariwala envisions the future of the app and expanding its reach to help more people.
鈥淚 think we can definitely expand beyond the food insecurity aspects and chronic conditions,鈥� Jariwala said. 鈥淓ven I can use this app, and I don't face food insecurity. But I can still use this app and enter everything that I have at home.鈥�