Academic education and research within Nutritional Sciences is increasingly based on a digital toolkit, comprised of various apps, web platforms, data processing activities and electronic databases. While Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have allowed for rapid advances and novel education and research approaches, the heterogeneity of of ICT components used - most of which evolved through the digitization of traditional tools and best practices - has created a fragmented environment where digital workflows are easily disconnected.
The open Nutrition Informatics e-framework (ONIF) is designed to harmonise the data, tools, processes and best practices needed for efficient nutrition academic education and research, providing an open and extensible platform for students and researchers alike. ONIF provides a digital framework for reusable solutions to common processes such as nutritional analysis and diet plan generation and visualisation, using open-source data and FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reuse). Provenance information and extensive metadata is attached to every input, processing and export stage, in order to facilitate reuse and evaluate data quality and fitness for purpose. Using a common data model based on ontologies, ONIF provides both human- and machine-understandable interfaces in the form of a Web-based platform and APIs, respectively, promoting interoperability. The framework is currently under active development, in collaboration with academic and education research stakeholders.