Objective
This proposal describes an information system concerning nutrition issues. The proposed system can help the users monitor their healthy condition conveniently.
There are many nutrition information systems existing in the market. After studying, we found that those systems have problems more or less, they are not good enough. Some of them provide too professional function, some of them do not have user friendly interface, and some of them do not have reasonable healthy control methods. These problems will be described in the Problem part in details.
Hence, there is much room to improve such nutrition systems. Except the basic functions, more new features will be added into the system. The most significant improvement in our proposed system is introducing PDA device into the system architecture. Users take along with PDA to record necessary data. The PDA connects to server, which stores nutrition database in, to update data periodically. These proposed new features and functions will be described in Function part in detail.
Moreover, the proposed system enlarges the scope. Not only users, but also restaurants will be involved in its scope. The details will be described in Scope part.
Scope
The proposed system designs for the users who need an electronic-based tool to help monitor their own healthy condition. Especially, this system is suitable to the patients, such as diabetic and cardiac. These users use PDA device.
PDA side users are required to enter personal information as initialization. In the using period, users should enter their dish information. Functions of the system, such as calories calculation and pills remainder, are based on the information provided by users. But this system can only help the user to monitor their health. It is only a tool which just provides some recommendations to the user. So it means that if the user wants to make him healthier, he should follow the recommendation consciously. It does not mean the user who uses this system can keep him health automatically. In addition, these users must pay service fee of the system periodically. Service fee is described in the following paragraph.
The database of system is stored in a computer server. Server side users are responsible to maintain and update the database. Thus, system does not only provide accounts to the PDA side users, but also to the server-side users, including restaurants joined in the system and system maintainers.
The restaurants are responsible to update their own dish menu information in the database by using their accounts. Then the PDA side users can update their data when connect to the server, and the system runs efficiently. But PDA user cannot order a dish from a restaurant through PDA directly. To achieve this function requires the restaurants in our system can order dish online. Hence this function is unreasonable in a short period.
System maintainers are charge of system maintenance, including technology support and service fee management. The proposed system will cooperate with bank to manage the service fee. The fee will be paid by the user’s credit card, cash or check.
Moreover, all the nutrition information are collected and organized by system designers. If the nutrition laboratories have new result, system maintainers are responsible to update the system database.
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