Rab Campbell examines an initiative from Food Train and tech company SICCAR that helps older people live well at home, potentially freeing up hospital beds

SICCAR, collaborating with Food Train, is developing solutions to reduce food insecurity among older people. 

Half a million people over 65 in the UK were diagnosed with malnutrition, with a further million at risk, in 2019. This is a hidden condition with over 90% of sufferers living at home. The condition is often not diagnosed until the patient is admitted to hospital, clearly not the ideal place for it to be treated.  Putting appropriate nutritional support in place to allow hospital discharge can be difficult and is often unavailable or very expensive to deliver. 

Hospital dieticians can request a support service from Food Train.  By passing on appropriate patient medical details with consent, Food Train can confirm pre-discharge that they can deliver the required service to the patient’s home location.

Getting patients home quickly and freeing valuable hospital beds is the most immediate benefit - but there are many others. Older people suffering malnutrition are three times as likely to visit their GP and twice as likely to be admitted to hospital than their peers. Because of their condition they also take longer to become fit for discharge from hospital. 

Food Train’s support services reduce the risks and effects of malnutrition over time through information and support. Their shopping and meal planning Eat Well Buddy scheme is already running in West Lothian.  Here, a volunteer works with the older person over several weeks to plan their shopping list around meals and snacks, giving them an improved nutritional intake. Their Meal Makers service has volunteers who cook and share tasty and nutritious home cooked meals with the older members. 

Eating is a social activity, and this approach has proven enormously successful in getting malnutrition suffers back into sustainable and enjoyable eating habits. 

In addition, trained Food Train volunteers can use community malnutrition screening tools with results made available to NHS community dietitians in case further professional medical intervention is required.    

As Michelle Carruthers, chief executive of Food Train, said: “We have been successfully supporting older people to eat well in their own homes for 25 years.  We have 1,500 volunteers around Scotland and over 3,000 older members.

"Information about nutritional needs is rarely shared with us and it can take several weeks of us working with a new older person to see they need more help to eat well. Having a system where we receive and share information with our health and social care partners will undoubtedly help improve how we collectively detect, prevent and treat malnutrition among older people. SICCAR clearly has the potential to resolve this issue, allowing us to work more collaboratively and provide an even better service." 

SICCAR’s trust platform enables organisations to collaborate around sensitive records with confidence, knowing their subjects are safe and protected.  It accelerates data sharing by simplifying the technical controls required for governance and consent around protected data and GDPR compliance.

Peter Ferry, chief executive of SICCAR, said: “SICCAR makes cross-organisational collaboration through data sharing simple and straight forward. It supports more connected, citizen-centric, service delivery and reduces risks and costs for the organisations involved.   

"We’re addressing a fundamental need for trust and transparency which prevents organisations in the health and charitable sectors from streamlining operations between their different IT domains.

"The approach hinges on a new means of sharing sensitive patient records at the point of need to empower the third sector to confirm the provision of appropriate care and to enable continued recording of the patient’s condition.

"Bridging these gaps is key to enabling different sectors in our society to work together to better support vulnerable citizens. Our vision is to enable one connected journey for the citizen, better supporting them through all of their life events.

"We are delighted to be working with Food Train to trailblaze this approach” 

You can learn more about the project online.