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Progress in Industrial Ecology – An International Journal, Vol. 8, Nos. 1/2, 2013
An overview of the role of informatics-based systems in furthering an integrated paddock to plate food supply system Robert Steele The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract: Food, nutrition and dietary-related information are increasingly available in a digital form within the food production and consumption supply chain, including: identifier and inventory systems; digitised nutrient component databases; databases of consumer packaged foods indexed by universal product codes (UPCs); greater use of digital point-of-sale systems; and the rapid emergence of health and diet-related mobile ‘apps’. While these developments have emerged somewhat independently, they allow further integration and processing capabilities, with significant potential impact upon the efficiency and sophistication of the food supply chain, individual and society-wide health, statistics gathering and further environmental, materials and energy optimisation within the food supply chain – we refer to the enabling research field as nutrition informatics. In this article, we discuss the technological underpinnings, analyse the implications and applications of increasing digitisation of food-related information, and identify seven priority directions to advance informatics-based systems for achieving an integrated ‘paddock to plate’ food supply system. Keywords: food supply chain; nutrition; dietary intake; informatics; technology; nutrition informatics; mobile health; industrial ecology. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Steele, R. (2013) ‘An overview of the role of informatics-based systems in furthering an integrated paddock to plate food supply system’, Progress in Industrial Ecology – An International Journal, Vol. 8, Nos. 1/2, pp.30–44. Biographical notes: Robert Steele is the Head of Discipline and Chair of the Discipline of Health Informatics at The University of Sydney and the Director of the Health Informatics, Computation and Innovation Lab. He is the author of over 100 refereed articles and his professional service includes the current role of Vice Chair of ACM SIGMOBILE.
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Introduction
We introduce the definition of nutrition informatics as: “the study of the capture, storage, integration, processing and use of digitised nutrition, food and diet-related information, via means of computing, software, communications and peripheral systems.”
Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
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In this article we particularly focus on the implications of the increasing digitisation of food and nutrition-related information upon the food supply industry, including the linkages to the end consumer. There is substantial potential for: the development of food and nutrition-related informatics systems that can support a far more detailed understanding and analysis of materials flows and energy use throughout the food industry, an end-to-end food supply system integrated from producer to consumer, informatics tools to support greater consumer access to detailed nutrition-related information, systems to support more environmentally-aware and optimised food production and distribution, and the provision of a more detailed data-driven basis to support appropriate policy developments. Research into and understanding of digital food and nutrition information, resources and systems provides an emerging area at the intersection of health informatics, agriculture, nutrition and dietetics, medicine and healthcare, ecology, information science, information technology and engineering research, and this area includes scientific, policy and social considerations along with the technological challenges. The importance of this area is underscored by its universal applicability, impact and real-world applications as follows. The vast majority of the population does not know their aggregate nutritional intake on any given day or over longer periods, or even know their aggregate energy intake. This is all the more surprising given the following compelling considerations: a healthy diet is a universal and daily issue for all members of the global population; the strong link between nutrition and health (Shils et al., 2006); the important role of nutrition in preventing and managing chronic conditions (WHO, 2003); the link between nutrition and longevity (Finch, 2007); the impact on economic development (Strauss and Thomas, 1998) and the large financial implications globally for the health system and economy more broadly (Sturm, 2002). Notwithstanding more extensive and detailed food nutrition labeling adopted in various countries (Blumenthal and Volpp, 2010; Nestle, 2010) and growing numbers of diet-related public health interventions (Maruthur et al., 2009) detailed knowledge of nutritional intake and nutritional-content in the food supply chain remains relatively and surprisingly underdeveloped. A key technological development in recent years is the rapid uptake of powerful mobile or ‘smartphone’ devices that have various person-centric capabilities relevant to food consumption information capture, dietary decision making and guidance, such as advanced data capture, imaging and sensor capabilities, wireless and always-on connectivity, powerful processing and storage capabilities and high user engagement (Mutchler, et al., 2011). In addition there is the further use of data standards in the food industry (Donnelly et al., 2011) and digitisation of point-of-sale systems (Brinkerhoff et al., 2011), and the increasing introduction of standard identifier systems throughout the food supply chain (Regattieri et al., 2007; Schroeder and Tonsor, 2012). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the significant implications of informaticsbased systems, including particularly nutrition informatics systems, for the food supply chain, and the broader implications for the environment, individual health, population health and the food industry. We analyse this area according to three aspects: 1
reviewing the latest developments and literature in relation to current and emerging enabling technological capabilities (Section 2)
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the implications and applications of informatics-based systems for an integrated ‘paddock to plate’ food supply systems (Section 3)
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we identify seven priority directions to be further developed going forward to further advance such capabilities (Section 4).
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Technological building blocks
The capture, digitisation, integration and application of food production, dietary intake and nutrition-related information is a complex, multi-faceted challenge. Research and industry developments in this area are rapid, with multiple research disciplines, industries and standards efforts contributing relevant capabilities and technologies.
2.1 Food and product identifiers Typically required for large-scale information system integration, are unique identifiers. These provide a mechanism to unambiguously identify a given entity and enable the linking together of data related to that entity from multiple sources. This is relatively complex in the case of the food supply system, as there are various levels of granularity to consider such as different food types, different packaged food items, primary produce entities including for example livestock and crops, processed or unprocessed versions of particular foods and individual nutritional components amongst numerous other relevant distinct food-related entities. In addition, the identifiers used at various layers of the food supply chain are different, partly due to the fact that different types of food-related entities are being managed at these different stages, but also as various parts of the food supply industry have perforce originated and evolved independently. However at any given stage of the supply chain, there is emerging and significant standardisation and uptake in relation to identifiers, for example universal product codes (UPCs) for packaged food items or national cattle ID schemes at the level of cattle livestock (Schroeder and Tonsor, 2012). These standard identifiers, stored digitally, are important as the unique identifiers for information systems integration at various layers and between layers of the food supply system. The concrete manifestations for such identifiers are typically labels, barcodes and wireless-enabled signatures such as RFID tags (Regattieri, et al., 2007). A widely used identifier in relation to packaged foods is the UPC or barcode. In addition, another significant international standard is the global trade item number (GTIN) from which the GS1 system was originated (http://www.gs1.org/). Where packaged foods with such identifiers are handled or purchased, powerful data capture techniques are available. UPCs or other identifiers such as QR codes allow unambiguous identification of individual food items and this identifying information can be inputted automatically via industrial scanners or wireless communication mechanisms, or at the consumer level by smartphone digital cameras or other scanners, at time of purchase, consumption or later. Once the UPC or other identifier is known, remote lookup of nutrient component databases can then be carried out to obtain up to potentially hundreds of dimensions of nutrient component information (Slining, 2012). The feasibility of such approaches has been demonstrated by Brinkerhoff et al (2011).
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As discussed in Section 4, a move towards a more universal and comprehensive food and nutrition entity standardisation regime beyond that enabled by UPC or GS1 can have a number of benefits. Existing commonly used standards such as barcodes have arisen to address specific needs in the retail food chain, and a more comprehensive standard may provide an improved basis for integration across all parts of the food supply system.
2.2 Food analytics Fundamentally nutritional composition is determined by food testing with data supplied by analytic efforts by government and industry, scientific literature, and from food label information (Haytowitz and Holden, 2012). Challenges for this include the variability of components. For a given food type, there is variation between different varieties e.g., between different varieties of the same vegetable type, and there is variability between different brands and even different instances of a food. Partly explaining this complexity, nutrition components can arise naturally, be generated through biological stress, be added (fortification), result from manufacturing, be contaminants or be added through feeding or fertilisation (Haytowitz and Holden, 2012). In addition, new foods are continually becoming available and the nutrient composition of existing foods changing. Nevertheless the development of increasingly comprehensive nutrition component databases is occurring in many countries and by numerous organisations. Significant existing public initiatives include USDA SR24 in the US, EuroFIR in Europe and NUTTAB in Australia and private initiatives include the Gladson Nutrition Database. USDA SR24 for example includes over 7,900 food items (Haytowitz and Holden, 2012). It should be noted that testing of food products can occur at various stages of the food supply chain, such as at the collection elevators in the case of grains (Golan et al., 2004), but that currently this testing information may not always be kept and integrated into broader food supply chain information systems.
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Data standards
Throughout the food supply chain, different data storage formats are utilised, and identifiers are far from the only data standards to be considered. Variations in relation to syntax chosen, proprietary formats, extent of data stored and data semantics can all impact upon integration and interoperability. In general, increased standardisation of data formats will facilitate improved integration and digital information flow and there is a need for greater development of non-proprietary standards (Donnelly et al., 2011). It is interesting to note that in the case of food traceability in the USA, economic incentives have largely driven traceability adoption in different forms for different food types, without this being driven by government regulation (Golan et al., 2004). For example, in relation to nutrition data representation various levels of detail of data storage can be implemented. While there are simpler levels of detail such as those found on current nutrition facts panel labeling, such as total energy content or macro-nutrient proportions e.g., protein, carbohydrates, fats, there are also far more detailed component descriptions including hundreds of nutritional components per food. These include various macronutrient components such as fibre, various essential fatty acids and amino acids – but also the full range of vitamins and minerals, antioxidants and phytochemicals. For example per food within the USDA SR24 there are up to 146 components listed and per food in NUTTAB 2010 there are up to 245 components listed.
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2.4 Dietary intake information capture technologies and approaches Capture and storage of food purchase and consumption data is also of central concern for nutrition informatics and for bridging the final link of integration from ‘paddock to plate’. We summarise technological developments in this area here, but a more extensive review of emerging technologies for automated capture of dietary intake information can be found in (Steele, 2013). Capture of such information has traditionally been implemented for market research, statistics gathering or research purposes. Services such as Scantrack and Homescan by Nielsen and What We Eat in America (WWEIA-NHANES) by the USDA and US-CDC provide survey-based data (Slining, 2012). These tools however have not had the goal of supporting consumer self-knowledge of nutritional intake and so have not provided any form of nutritional information service for individuals. The application of, for example, emerging smartphone-based tools are one development with potential, to not just extend capabilities in relation to population dietary data gathering, but also to empower consumers with self-captured information to assist informed choices about their own diets. Existing techniques such as manual food journals have proven generally too cumbersome for widespread and ongoing use by large numbers of the public. As such, a key sub-area of research is information technology-based automated dietary intake information capture techniques. There are two key aspects to this: 1
identification of food types consumed
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capture of portion size information.
Both are technically challenging but the latter has been considered more so (Martin et al., 2009). Many research efforts to date have concentrated on achieving such dietary intake data capture just in research trial settings, but emerging technological capabilities demonstrate the potential for such data capture to be more broadly applicable (Passler and Fischer, 2011). Where such detailed information is difficult to capture, alternatively aggregate consumption data collection approaches are possible as introduced below. The capture of information about food types and portion sizes consumed for non-packaged foods and composite items such as plates of food, is recognised as a hard and ongoing complex research challenge. However where foods are uncoded or freeweight, combinations of image processing-based (Martin et al., 2009; Six et al., 2010), audio-based (Yatani and Truong, 2012), novel wearable systems (Lopez-Meyer et al., 2012; Sun et al., 2010) or smart tabletop technologies (Chang, K-h. et al., 2006) and manual entry approaches may be utilised. Where the food is a packaged food, identification is relatively trivial based on UPC/barcode. Determining aggregate nutrition information for an individual flows directly from capturing exact food and nutrition intake at each sitting as described above. However, as determination of food types and portion sizes will not be achieved in all instances, alternates include such aggregate approaches as capturing shopping receipt/point-of-sale information (Brinkerhoff et al., 2011) or scanning of household food inventory (Stevens et al., 2010). Such information can be used to cross-validate intake data from such camera and other sensor-based methods described above or as the basis for an alternate approach. Calculation of aggregate intake for a household, based on the full grocery load purchase can provide information on total intake (in relation to home eating) even if specifics per sitting were not known.
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Applications and implications
A powerful aspect of nutrition informatics is a focus on the integration of the disparate food and nutrition-related information resources. It should be noted that current integration of all information sources from producer to consumer is not necessarily practical or required. However, even limited integration of some aspects of these information resources can provide significantly increased sophistication in the food supply and nutrition system (Brinkerhoff et al., 2011; Donnelly et al., 2011; Golan et al., 2004). We discuss a number of significant implications and applications of an informaticsenabled, integrated food supply system.
3.1 Further enabling end-to-end materials flow analysis Given the scale of complexity, information and communications technology systems represent the only practical tool available at this time able to store, process and manage the full complexity of food and nutrition flows that occur end-to-end in the food supply chain. An implication of greater detailed knowledge of the flow of food-related materials and items, and knowledge of their nutritional composition is the enabling of greater optimisation of the food supply chain. This will include more complete information upon which to base optimisation of the food supply chain in terms of the quality and healthiness of food supply including its nutritional content, costs and economic efficiency (Ahumada and Villalabos, 2009), energy consumption (Canning et al., 2010), freshness, safety, and the ability to respond quickly and effectively to food-related alerts and food-related disease outbreaks (Regattieri et al., 2007). This can also be considered in terms of achieving a more advanced industrial metabolism-based analysis of the food supply chain (Hawken et al., 2010).
3.2 Environmental management and sustainability Integrated and digitised food supply systems can play an important role in improved environmental management and sustainability (Bremmers et al., 2011). By improving efficiency throughout the food supply chain, food can be more efficiently produced and this includes more efficient use of natural resources, energy and labour inputs. Improved standardisation and information systems can also support environmentally beneficial innovation, for example, Thomas (2009) proposes how the extension of UPC codes can further support recycling and provide a basis for recycling innovations. The extra data available can provide a more detailed basis for appropriate policies to support more sustainable use of agricultural resources. The integrated systems can also facilitate more detailed environmental stakeholder analysis and management, and support small to medium enterprise (SME) involvement in improved environmental management and practices.
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Improved individual diet and health
A fundamental motivation for enabling greater food supply-related digital data capture is to enable the feedback of this information to the individual to enable and empower them to improve their diet and hence health. Current resources available include dietary reference intakes and food labels, but the application of these resources in a non-digital form still poses sufficient complexity and effort so as to have limited their impact. There is substantial evidence that even simple food labeling can affect healthier food choice (Barreiro-Hurle et al., 2010), that maintaining detailed records is a key technique for behaviour change (Shay et al., 2009) and the benefits of dietary self-monitoring and recording to achieve weight-loss are widely demonstrated (Burke et al., 2011). Nevertheless, further research into understanding information technology-based behaviour change applications (Jordan et al., 2011; Lindqvist et al., 2012) is still required. A goal of nutrition informatics is to be able to make available to individuals, full information on their aggregate nutrition intake in terms of many or all the multiple nutritional components. A pre-existing use of the term nutrition informatics can be found in Hoggle et al. (2006), and although this current paper’s origination of nutrition informatics was independently conceptualised without a knowledge of Hoggle et al.’s definition, this previous work is particularly relevant to the use of technology in the field of dietetics and the establishing of such ‘optimal nutritional status’. Ultimately, these works are moving towards identifying similar emerging capabilities in the area of dietetics in particular. Modes of feeding-back nutrition-related information to individuals in informaticsbased systems include 1
simple display/ awareness of aggregate nutrition
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novel systems for auto-generated dietary suggestions or guidance based on current aggregate intake and individual context
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persuasive technology approaches.
In terms of display of aggregate nutrition information, the nature of how this is presented may have a material impact on the efficacy of such information for affecting user behaviour (Klasnja et al., 2009; Lindqvist et al., 2012). It can be displayable via textual, graphical or other interfaces on mobile devices or desktop computers and this will provide individuals with the ability to study their nutritional intake in more detail. Display of this information to users upon their mobile device as they are making their food choices has the potential for more profound impact on dietary decision making. Secondly, powerful dietary suggestion and guidance capabilities can be built into mobile device-based and other tools. These could range from simple reminders, to the ability to suggest the food item(s) or meal with the best fit for moving an individual towards their personalised target nutrient intake goals, given their calculated current aggregate intake of each of the various nutrients. Thirdly, recent work in relation to persuasive technology also holds potential applicability in affecting food choice (Chatterjee and Price, 2009; Fogg, 2003). If an individual did not feel they could persist in healthy food choices on their own, they may choose to make use of assistive tools. Such emerging concepts as gamification (Deterding et al., 2011), personalised health messages to mobile devices (Steele, 2011), and reminders may also potentially have applicability in this regard.
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3.4 Consumer-driven food supply quality improvement A broad implication of these developments is enabling a feedback mechanism from informed consumer demand and preferences ultimately to agricultural and food processing practices. Nutrition informatics systems further enable a closing of a feedback loop whereby the needs and preferences of informed consumers on a small or large scale can potentially have an impact on food supply operations. Informed consumers in this way may potentially be able to drive higher quality in food supply and produce. It could also be argued that availability of such information to individuals can empower their decision making and also potentially make organisations involved in food production, delivery and policy more accountable (Dutton and Eynon, 2009). The underlying integrated food supply chain and nutrition informatics infrastructure, by making detailed nutritional information available to individuals, could provide a platform for bottom-up or non-institutional innovation (Dutton and Eynon, 2009). Such information availability also promises to enable new forms of participatory research or ‘citizen scientist’ contributions and may also be seen as an example of the ‘democratisation of data’.
3.5 Greater traceability of foods Tracking of foods as they proceed through the food production supply chain already occurs to a significant extent (Golan et al., 2004; Opara, 2003; Regattieri et al., 2007), but there is scope for much further sophistication and development. Different identifiers are used at different stages of the supply chain and for different food type areas (Golan et al., 2004) – informatics-based systems are the appropriate tool to achieve greater integration of this information. As has been described in the literature, traceability has a number of benefits including in relation to managing food-related health scares, managing responses to food contamination or food-related disease outbreaks, and for better managing the food supply chain. Further developments will allow consumers to be aware of and exert market pressure in relation to the origins of their foods.
3.6 Greater digitisation and sophistication of food labels Such systems as nutrition informatics-based systems also allow for the revolutionising of current food labeling approaches – instead of a static and simple, physical nutrition fact label, a personally customised digital label can be displayed to individuals on their mobile device screen (or via other digital display) and they can select to look into more or less detail about a food’s nutrition. Such approaches also can create a more innovative and competitive environment in relation to the provision of healthy food and also in relation to food labeling systems and tools themselves.
3.7 Supporting healthcare practice Health informatics supports novel capabilities not just in clinical settings but increasingly for everyday healthy living and well-being with health information systems increasingly
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extending to the consumer (Steele and Lo, 2009). Nutrition informatics can help provide support in such areas as preventative healthcare, healthy lifestyles and the prevention and management of chronic conditions. Emerging research questions include capturing the effectiveness of nutrition-related public health interventions including via almost real-time data, new forms of communication and interaction between clinicians and consumers via personal health records (Steele et al., 2012) and digital or mobile device-based care plans incorporating nutrition guidance that assist specific chronic condition care (Årsand et al., 2010). There is potential for an individual to share their electronically recorded dietary and nutrition information with their physician or other health professional, where the individual wishes and agrees to this, to assist in the management of health or chronic conditions. This could enhance the ability to discuss dietary practice and change with a clinician or dietician.
3.8 System and population-wide statistics capture Existing system-wide statistics gathering makes use of broad measures of food production data or food purchase surveys. These do not have the detail to support various emerging applications of nutrition intake analysis particularly in relation to health. Via greater fine-grained detail in relation to population nutrition intake, food production, processing and distribution data, more detailed analysis and capabilities for more real-time and end-to-end food system analysis can be enabled. One enabler for this will be further non-proprietary data standards within and across food industry sectors (Donnelly et al., 2011). Secondly, nutrition informatics tools available to individuals can support improved population health, epidemiological or health informatics research capabilities. In the case of personal activities such as dietary intake, maintaining anonymity even while data is being collected on a population-scale will be highly desirable. Various techniques allow for anonymous submission via such technologies as MIX networks (Sampigethaya and Poovendran, 2006) and summarised data submission techniques can allow privacy maintenance (Clarke and Steele, 2012), while still allowing sufficient data to be available for population health research and data analysis. A wide range of specific data mining approaches can be potentially applied to such aggregate data (Steele and Lo, 2009), but the detailed discussion of these is beyond the scope of this paper.
3.9 Privacy and security issues At the same time there can be benefits from such systems these systems also pose potential privacy, policy and ethics challenges. However it should be noted that through secure system design and appropriate policy and legal regulation, this information could be restricted to be held with and only accessed by the individual and for example historical stores not kept. Nutrition informatics-related information for an individual could leverage the same security mechanisms provided by electronic and personal health records systems (Steele et al., 2012). Also as per the case of personal health record systems, authorising access to dietary intake information by a treating health professional, might in some cases, enable enhanced care.
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Seven directions required to accelerate the development of an informatics-based integrated paddock-to-plate food supply system
There are a number of future developments that can assist in and accelerate the realisation of a more optimised and integrated food supply chain system and nutrition informatics infrastructure.
4.1 Greater capture of identifying information at time of primary food production Importantly, an issue in the food supply chain is that information is not captured as extensively as it could be at the primary production and other stages of the food supply chain. A challenge for the availability of nutrition information in the food supply system and to individuals currently is that when food is produced substantial information is not captured or measured, then subsequently the nutritional constituents of various foods then need to be ‘re-discovered’ and then such information, in a highly incomplete form, can then be in-part provided to consumers to inform their dietary decision-making. More logically the nutritional composition should not be unknown. Rather, via economic self-interest and a level of regulation and standardisation, further data about food items can be recorded at time of primary production and these be made available in a digital format to facilitate the integration of this information into the overall paddock-to-plate food supply system. Already there exist many farming practices that involve identification of individual animals or plants. For example, traditionally in the case of animals, ear-tags are often used and these may contain information about the specific animal such as breed, date-ofbirth, farm etc (Opara, 2003). In addition, various national initiatives around the world have introduced Cattle IDs to allow the traceability of individual animals (Schroeder and Tonsor, 2012). Increasing the levels of ICT adoption within the primary food production industry represents one of the underlying challenges, but the increasingly pervasive deployment of consumer information devices that are present with individuals also when they are in their workplaces, can be increasingly leveraged for industry information integration purposes (Steele and Clarke, 2012), including within primary industries.
4.2 More universal use of unique food identifiers such as UPCs Secondly, efforts to extend the usage of food item UPCs to be more universal, and also increasingly in eat-out menus (Nestle, 2010), will advance the capture of food consumption information and this represents a research area where policy, adoption and stakeholder issues will play a part. Policy change to introduce and require universal provision of food identifiers represents a complementary and potentially more powerful pathway (rather than such techniques as food image analysis) to achieving the ability of all in the population to have a complete knowledge of their detailed nutritional intake and for there to be comprehensive paddock to plate food information systems. There is already a trend towards further compulsory food labelling (Nestle, 2010). The further advancement of such initiatives can provide flow-through benefits throughout the food supply chain as described in this article. However, the trend towards more universal use of food identifiers is more powerful than just improved physical nutrition
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fact labeling, as food identifiers allow the retrieval of far more detailed nutrition component information (Brinkerhoff et al., 2011). The greater universality of such barcodes can also overcome many of the research challenges currently experienced both in integration and also automated capture of dietary intake information via sensor and engineering methods (Steele, 2013).
4.3 Development of a more advanced international food identifier system A common unique identifier for use in food and nutrition information systems, although not the only one, is the UPC identifier. However, while UPC identifiers have been adopted to address the tracking needs of retailers and processors, there would be benefits from a more systematic coding of all food types, varieties and items that is not driven by just those considerations. It should be noted that while each UPC is associated with one food item, the inverse is not true (Brinkerhoff et al., 2011) as for a given food item if there are different package sizes these would each have a different UPC. For drugs there are National Drug Code (NDC) codes (FDA, 2012), but there are no such standard codes for foods. Potentially relevant existing codifications that may provide a starting point towards this include the unique ingredient identifier codes (UNII) (NIH, 2012) and the Langual food description thesaurus (http://www.langual.org/). International efforts to produce further standardisation in this regard would be beneficial. Such standardisation can support greater representation of semantics and attributes in the identifier system and support comprehensive representation of the different types of food-related entities found throughout the food supply system.
4.4 Increased food analytics testing and government-provided nutrient component databanks A critical data resource for the food supply chain is detailed knowledge of the nutritional and chemical components of food items held in nutrition databanks. This becomes a central resource in understanding the operation of the food supply chain and its interactions with consumers and their health, and with other stakeholders. More universal and sophisticated food testing should hence be further developed and implemented. This also includes evolution and advancement of the scientific techniques involved in lab testing of foods. Given the central role of such data sources in enabling other informatics-based capabilities in the food supply system, the role of government in providing resources for increasing and extending food analytics operations and the greater open-access, digital availability of this information via standard interfaces such as application programming interfaces (APIs), is strongly warranted.
4.5 Greater integration and standardisation of disparate nutrition, dietary and food information sources Numerous of the food and nutrition-related information resources still exist in isolation from each other. As discussed throughout this article, significant value would result from further integration of these information systems. To facilitate this, adoption of standard programmatic interfaces/APIs to such resources as the nutrition databanks would spur
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integration and also spur technology-based innovation in relation to food and nutrition software tools. Regulatory changes such as requiring food traceability, requiring the use of identifiers and open data standards can assist this. However further standardisation of non-proprietary data formats used throughout the supply chain will also provide benefits (Donnelly et al., 2011) – common unique identifiers only provide one building block to support integration. With food and nutrition-related standards building blocks further developed, a situation where market forces and consumer and industry demand can accelerate integration and further innovation is more likely to exist.
4.6 Regulatory changes Regulatory changes in a number of regards can substantially aid the creation of an integrated food supply chain. These changes should also encourage the adoption of standards in terms of identifiers, mandatory provision and availability of data, and further data standards. By making data available and via standard interfaces and formats, there is the potential to then catalyse market-driven competition and ICT innovation in this area. Such regulatory changes could include many aspects such as requiring data capture and identifiers at primary producers and processors, increasing use of food identifiers, greater traceability requirements, more extensive and widespread food analytic testing requirements and more sophisticated food labeling via digital formats.
4.7 New nutrition informatics tools As mentioned in the implications and applications section above, there are numerous end-user applications that can be built upon an informatics-based integrated food supply system data infrastructure. These range from mobile device-based apps to support dietary decision making to nutrition-related information systems that integrate with existing household devices such as refrigerators or other consumer devices. These tools will not only support more informed consumers, but can have a follow-through impact on food supply chain integration. An informatics-based infrastructure will also enable further software tools to be built and utilised throughout the various stages of the food supply chain, including at the primary producer and processor layers. It is important that standardised data formats and interfaces for nutrition informatics tools also be available so that they can be integrated seamlessly into other information systems and health informatics systems, so that such nutrition informatics tools do not generate islands of data isolated from other systems.
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Conclusions
A number of contemporary technological and practice developments are rapidly increasing the scale of digitised food and nutrition-related information capture, storage and integration. These provide enabling building blocks for developing a far more integrated paddock to plate food supply chain. This article analyses:
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the informatics and information and communications technology building blocks enabling an integrated food supply system
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the implications and applications of such an integrated food supply system
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identifies seven priority developments that will accelerate the development of an informatics-based integrated food supply chain.
Key recommendations include greater adoption of standard identifier systems, greater digital capture of data throughout the supply chain, more extensive governmentresourced food analytics and testing, the making available of such resulting data resources through standard programmatic interfaces (APIs) and regulatory changes. Applications include improved efficiency and optimisation across the food supply chain, greatly enhanced consumer self-knowledge of nutritional intake to enable improved health, improved population health, improved capabilities for clinicians to advise patients, and system-wide and population-wide data capture capabilities to support a more optimised, sustainable and environmentally-friendly food supply system.
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