New technology can help proactively monitor malnutrition.

Currently, healthcare professionals are spending hundreds of hours collecting and evaluating data for patients who are malnourished or at risk of being malnourished. They track these numbers to not only help treat their patients well, but also to meet federal requirements for reimbursement.

Aside from the time it takes, manually entering and evaluating this data is subjective, meaning that mistakes can be made and patients can receive varying degrees of care. And, the process costs billions of dollars.

People affected most by malnutrition are the elderly. In fact, around $51 billion goes toward treating malnutrition in this group of people.

Spencer Norton and his co-founder, Dr. Christopher Russell, found that a better workflow and data entry and evaluation mechanism could not only save communities billions of dollars, but could also serve as a proactive way to treat elderly patients at risk of malnutrition.

Together, they created NorviTech, a weight-based automation device designed to eliminate the process of nutrition and hydration intake monitoring. Their device reduces clinician workflows and syncs with care management systems to increase the accuracy and utility of data.

The technology is currently a working prototype, and the founders of NorviTech has interviewed 75+ clinicians around the world to ensure their design and focus is as accurate as possible.

Spencer and his team hope to patent the device and sell it to medical furniture manufacturers, where it will end up in hospitals and other healthcare facilities that serves the elderly all over the world.