Center for Connected Health policy is not limited in providing telehealth services for health promotion, disease prevention, consultation, diagnosis,enhancing Public Health, healthcare, health education delivery and support using mobile, video conferences, emails, and other telecommunication technologies but it also has a newly emerging aspect of telehealth which is tele-nutrition. Tele-nutrition is the provision of nutrition Care Processes including nutrition diagnosis, nutrition assessment, nutrition monitoring, nutrition evaluation, and nutrition intervention, or plan care from a registered Nutritionist or Dietitian from distance using telecommunication technologies.
Dietitians provide nutrition Guidance to patients, families, or staff within a health care facility or can provide telenutrition health services to patients of the hospital or clinical settings who don’t have a dietitian on regular basis.
Like other telemedicine services telenutrition provide easy access, cost-effective treatment, and provides services to people living in remote areas. Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) can access more individuals and engage patients in improving health and creating prevention strategies. Medical nutrition therapy (MNT) is a part of Medicare Part B. So, telenutrition services reimburse in Medicare part B even if it provides services via telecommunication technologies.
Telenutrition is most effective for patients with diabetes, heart problems, obesity, arthritis, and depression. Patients living in rural areas with limited access to food and nutrition experts and obese patients can get easy access to weight loss management through video conferencing.
An innovative telenutrition training program has also been developed to provide culinary coaching (CC) to improve patient’s nutrition by culinary training and health coaching through videos.
There is telenutrition software as well, designed for scheduling, automatic reminders, keeping electronic health record for e charting, accessing to credit card, built-in video chat, video conferencing, webinar, screen sharing, charting during tele nutrition counseling, share documents, emails, surveys and for sharing nutrition supplement recommendations.