Nutri-Guard AI

Nuvilab Inc. is a Korean food AI company founded in 2020, with its office in Gangnam, Seoul and a US office in Sacramento, California. It builds AI food scanners and meal intake analytics for schools, daycare centres, corporate cafeterias and hospitals, turning what people are served and actually eat into nutrition data.

Nutri-Guard AI applies this platform to hospital patients. Foodservice staff photograph returned trays, the AI segments each food item and measures how much was eaten, and the system flags declining energy, protein and food intake for registered dietitians to review. It keeps an evidence trail for malnutrition documentation and physician coding review, aligned with the US CMS malnutrition care quality measure. Target users are dietitians, physicians and quality and finance leaders in hospitals.

• Tray scan: staff photograph returned trays to link the meal served with what the patient ate.
• Food segmentation: AI separates each food item in the photo and measures the amount consumed.
• Intake trends: dashboards track energy, protein and food-item intake over time for each patient.
• Risk flags: declining intake is surfaced to registered dietitians for follow-up.
• Clinical evidence: intake records are kept for malnutrition documentation and coding review.
• Quality measure support: designed as an evidence layer for the CMS Malnutrition Care Score reporting.

• Clinical nutrition departments in Vietnamese hospitals monitoring intake of elderly, surgical and oncology patients.
• Hospital catering contractors proving meal quality and reducing plate waste on wards.
• Nursing homes and elder care centres tracking residents' food intake to prevent weight loss.

• Individual intake data: each patient tray becomes a measured intake record instead of a visual estimate.
• Earlier malnutrition detection: declining energy and protein intake is surfaced for dietitian review.
• Better documentation: stored evidence supports malnutrition diagnosis and coding, a gap the company puts at about 30% of adults at risk versus 8.9% coded.
• Proven platform: the underlying food AI has analysed more than 100 million meals across over 1,300 sites.

Hospital malnutrition is widespread but under-documented, and payers are starting to measure malnutrition care quality. At the same time, hospitals face staff shortages that make manual intake charting unreliable. Asian hospitals, including in Singapore where Nuvilab cites an acute care reference, are exploring AI tray analysis, a direction relevant to the growing clinical nutrition departments in Vietnam.

Founded in 2020 and based in Seoul, with a US office in Sacramento. Awards listed by the company include the 2025 NIPA Global AI Innovation Award, No.11 globally in The FoodTech 500 (2025), a 2024 CES Innovation Award and WEF Technology Pioneer (2023); it is B Corp certified since 2024. The company notes that hospital validation specific to Nutri-Guard AI is still in progress.