First Futuristic Hospital Canteen with Facial Recognition and Customized Healthy Diet!

The Southern Division of Renji Hospital brings AI solution into staff canteens

 

People.cn-Shanghai Channel   June 17 (Dong Zhiwen)

Information including food name, price and calories contained popped up on the display screen right after Dr. Huang placed the tray with her dishes in the induction area. Then, the facial recognition technology in the specific area on the screen recognized her gentle smile and promptly took the payment. The whole process was within only few seconds, significantly reducing the queuing time. It even sends a real-time personal healthy-diet report to your WeChat.

With “For Patients Satisfaction, For Staff' s Happiness” as a notion, the Southern Division of Renji Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine (herein referred to as The Southern Division of Renji Hospital in the following text) is promoting the concept of the hospital' s smart construction. As an exploration recently carried out, the hospital has unlocked a novel experience of artificial intelligence implanted in its employee dining, aiming at establishing the first smart canteen empowered by facial recognition and customized healthy diet in the health care system of Shanghai.

Rather than traditional approaches of identifying the cutleries’ shape or implanting chips into cutleries, the core technology adopted by the Sodexo' s SEEFOOD system is to, based on AI solutions and visual recognition technology, recognize foods according to image information. Foods in dishes are directly identified by the high definition cameras. Currently, the system has realized the identification for all the foods provided in the staff canteen with a recognition rate of 99%, which means an about equal resolving power of human eyes. In addition, the system is integrated with the human resources management system of the hospital. It supports multiple payment methods that are convenient and speedy, including staff’s check-outs by facial recognition (Face-Pay), meal cards, payment QR codes, etc. The time of waiting in a line is thus significantly reduced while enhancing the employees’ dining experience at the same time, lowering the hospital’s operating cost as a pricing solution.

What truly cheers up the employees about this system is the auto-generated calories information of the chosen foods and the real-time individual healthy diet report sent to each staff’s WeChat. The report tells intake and changes of calories, fat, protein and carbohydrates. Customized nutrition analysis and exercise suggestion can also be offered in accordance with each individual’s diet data. The system cares for employees’ health condition and improves individual health management.

Li Jin, Executive Vice President of the Southern Division of Renji Hospital, says that, traditionally, information construction of hospitals generally focuses on enhancing patients experience and hospitals’ operating efficiency. As a matter of fact, information construction has a positive outlook into a broad spectrum of hospital management. By innovatively introducing AI solution into employees’ dining experience, the Southern Division of Renji Hospital not only echoes the strategy of “Healthy China 2030” and endeavors further efforts into improving employees’ physical fitness and health condition but also makes a new step into the exploration of applying advanced information technology into the development of employees’ work and life quality.

“As previously mentioned by staff, if information construction can boost the efficiency and convenience of patients, would it be possible for our staff to benefit from it in the aspect of work and life quality?” President Li answers the question, gratified: “Today marks our first step.”