This is the last page of this tutorial, but in many ways, it is the most important one.  As nutrition professionals, we need to start looking at the Internet as more than just a learning and information source.  The web provides us with new ways and tools for working with and delivering our services to the public.
 

• For example, Food Smart Online will soon provide a complete online solution for recipe, menu, and personal intake analysis.  This will allow you and your clients to track and assess intake records at any time from any computer with Internet access! 

• Online tools such as Food Smart Online, coupled with upcoming verified professional-quality advice sites such as AdviceZone.com will lead to further opportunites for personalized web-based counselling or dietary planning. 
• There are, of course, confidentiality and legal licensure issues for dietitians working in this manner, especially when it involves working with people outside the geographic area in which they are licensed to practice. 
• Confidentiality issues are becoming less difficult to manage through the use of e-mail encryption technology, and the use of secure Internet e-mail services such as ReceiptMail, and password-protected "chat rooms" on the Internet. 
• Licensure issues are also being overcome by the recruitment of dietitians living (or licensed to practice) in various geographic areas.  This approach is being used by a number of Internet-based nutrition and diet sites which employ dietitians (such as ediets.com). 

• You might even decide to have your own website in order to draw potential clients to your services! 
• If you do, you will find that you must provide some helpful, free information to your potential clients in order to draw them into paying for your other products or services. 
• Having your own website can be a lot of work if you decide to do it all yourself, and it does require careful planning from a marketing perspective if you want to make it successful.  There are, however, helpful learning opportunities and tools which make it a lot easier now than it used to be.  Having your own website also has many rewards, and based on my own experience, it will most certainly take your practice in new directions that you could never imagine. 

There is an incredible level of interest in health and nutrition among the general public today.  Many web entrepreneurs who are not qualified health professionals see this, and are responding in ways that may not always be credible or reliable.  By developing our Internet-related skills, our ability to effectively monitor public interests in health and nutrition, and respond to those needs and interests in innovative ways via the web, dietitians will "be there" to lead the public to credible and reliable nutrition services in "the Internet Age".
 

Copyright 2000-2001, Nu Connexions

www.nuconnexions.com/Enhance/innovate.htm
This page last updated March 22, 2002.