Nutrition Next

Nutritional management for critically ill patients is a crucial factor that significantly influences their prognosis and treatment outcomes. However, its implementation presents many challenges. While comprehensive evaluation of multiple nutritional routes, such as enteral, parenteral, and oral intake, is necessary, clinical settings are always busy, and sufficient calculations and considerations are often difficult.

Nutrition Next is an app developed to address these needs. By simply entering information such as enteral and parenteral nutrition and dietary intake, the app automatically calculates energy and protein intake and provides specific improvement advice based on international guidelines and the latest clinical findings. This significantly reduces the need for tedious calculations and confirmations, helping healthcare professionals implement nutritional management more quickly and appropriately.

The app is targeted at a wide range of professionals, primarily in the intensive care field. By using the same platform, a multidisciplinary team, including physicians working in ICUs and emergency centers, medical residents, medical students, and even registered dietitians, can share a common understanding of patients' nutritional status and improve the quality of team care. Particularly in critically ill patients, poor nutritional management is known to directly lead to increased infection risk, delayed wound healing, muscle weakness, and poor long-term prognosis. This app helps prevent these oversights.

Nutrition Next was developed through a collaboration between the ICU team and registered dietitians at the Wakayama Medical University Advanced Emergency and Critical Care Center. It incorporates daily accumulated knowledge and actual patient data, and strives for simplicity and practicality. Researchers and educators can also use it as an educational tool for junior doctors and students, learning everything from the basics of nutritional assessment to practical clinical applications.

This app is also free and available to everyone. Its purpose is to create an environment where all healthcare professionals involved in the care of critically ill patients can equally practice high-quality nutritional management, regardless of location or occupation. Future updates will incorporate the latest evidence, automatically calculate nutritional assessment scores, and enable team sharing.

Appropriate nutritional management is essential to protecting the future of critically ill patients. Nutrition Next reduces on-site complexity and enables quick, reliable decision-making. We aim to be a powerful partner in daily practice for all those involved in critical care, including the ICU. We encourage you to incorporate it into your daily practice and use it to help protect the lives and quality of life of more patients.