Development of Food Informatics Software: A mineral Deficiency Disease-Food Guide System

Abstract

MDD-FG System is an informatics software developed to enlighten the public about the use of food in the management of mineral deficiency diseases. The mineral content of Malaysian foods are correlated with standard dietary benchmarks. It is constructed based on knowledge database and rule-based data mining principle of simple expert system. Software framework of the system is built with Microsoft Windows 8.1 environment and Visual Studio 2013. The minimum hardware installation requirements include: IntelR CoreTM processor, 0.5 – 1.0 GHz processor speed, RAM of 1 Gigabyte, and 500 Megabyte HDD Space. The database was designed in Microsoft SQL server. The data are sourced primarily from ICPMS elemental analysis of food contents. The secondary data of minerals and diseases were obtained from the literature and dietary allowances from Malaysian and WHO dietary benchmarks. The system user interface launches home page that displays the MDD-FG in text and graphic illustration. The title-bar displays 'welcome' on the home page window. The three accessible commands in the menu bar are “File”, “View”, and “About”. The “View” contains three paths. These are “Food Dishes”, “Mineral Elements”, and “Deficiency Diseases”. The six “View” sub-path interfaces are Foods/Diseases, Foods/Elements, Diseases/Foods, Diseases/Elements, Elements/Foods, and Elements/Diseases. The internal features and system units indicated normal behavior upon white and black box testing. End user response survey was conducted. The software was adjudged user friendly, acceptable, and efficient.