For more than 20 years, Dr. Rohan Bissoondath has provided care to community members in his hometown of Calgary, Alberta. With years of experience treating patients across a number of different acute care settings, he quickly realized the power that a preventative approach holds in keeping people healthy and out of hospital, for as long as possible. 

“When I worked at a hospital, I often felt like I was working in a time machine,” explains Dr. Bissoondath. “One room would have a 50-something year-old patient that participated in a number of high-risk behaviours, such as inactivity, smoking, drinking, who had suffered a heart attack. In the next room there would be a 20-something patient who is not taking good care of themselves and I would think - I can predict where you will end up, and it’s right next door. Even though both patients are greatly shocked at the state of their health, they often do not understand how they got there. And I know that I have a real opportunity to improve the outcome for the younger patient if I can focus on care and recommendations that will prevent them from repeating the same mistakes.”

In 2007, Dr. Bissoondath opened Preventous Collaborative Health, where practitioners take an upstream approach to ensuring the long-term health and wellness of patients through preventive medicine.

Patients at Preventous Collaborative Health Centre work with multidisciplinary teams to develop comprehensive and preventative health plans designed to keep them healthy well into the future.

RxFood provides nutrition precision to support precision in preventative care.

“Lifestyle behaviours, like diet and nutrition, are critically important factors to consider in preventative health,” says Dr Bissoondath. “However, we also know that for most people, tracking and managing nutrition for their care team to review is a challenge. It’s difficult to remember to track everything you eat and it’s a challenge to be accurate. People are busy with their lives and food tracking is onerous. It can be a hassle.”

That’s where RxFood comes in. Through RxFood, patients can seamlessly turn images of the food they eat into real-time nutritional analytics and personalized nutrition plans that are shared with patients and their care team to support ongoing, and preventative care.

“We were looking for a tool for months and months,” says Dr Bissoondath. “I kept saying I wish I could take a picture of this apple, for example, to record it and break down the nutrients. I can’t remember how we came across RxFood, but when we did, it was like the sky opened up and the sun was shining. It almost seemed too good to be true.”

Preventous has adopted the use of RxFood across its programs with positive feedback, most notably among the centre’s dieticians. RxFood also integrates continuous blood glucose (CGM) data that has been collected into its platform and securely shares integrated nutritional data, analytics and reports with a patient’s care team through a clinician portal. Centre care staff, including registered dieticians can assess a patient’s nutrition, health information and progress through a holistic lens, with real-time insights that show food consumption and comprehensive nutrition analyses, making care appointments more efficient, effective and useful.

RxFood delivers accuracy with a commitment to continual innovation to meet new needs.

“As we gain new insights that advance the approach and effectiveness of precision and preventative care, we need tools and resources that match our commitment to innovating to improve accuracy and meet emerging needs,” explains Dr. Bissoondath. “Being able to work with the RxFood team has been so easy. The team is collaborative and wants to receive feedback. They are evolving and innovating daily and working with new partners to improve data integration and provide more insight to care.”

Practitioners at Preventous use data as a key tool to support precision medicine and define care and prevention for their patients. They don’t just want to aim for a range of “normal” for a group of patients; they work to identify optimized ranges for each individual patient. RxFood supports precision medicine through personalized nutrition plans, analytics and recommendations that will best support the health of patients. Patients are able to maintain their diet with confidence knowing the foods that work best for them.

“There couldn’t be an easier or more accurate way to track, review and manage nutrition - and now that we can combine that with CGM through RxFood, it’s a priceless tool. We can use this with our patients for a period of time, or revisit it every three months,” says Dr Bissoondath.

The Results of RxFood and precision medicine

Through RxFood, Preventous Health Centre is able to collect accurate diet and nutritional data to optimize patient care and disease prevention. Additionally, practitioners and patients are supported to manage their glucose levels, metabolism and diet through real-time, accurate and integrated information. Metabolic health can fluctuate across individuals depending on their insulin sensitivity. For many individuals a 15-20 minute walk before and/or after eating can make a difference. RxFood provides the individualized information that patients and their care teams need to effectively make diet and lifestyle changes that will best support their health.