We’ve just teamed up with Health Apps to work on Cook & Count – an app to find out the nutritional content of home cooked food for people with (or at risk of developing) health issues like diabetes and heart disease.

Health Apps was founded by health psychologist Deborah Wilder in 2013. When her son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, Deborah realised how much time and effort is required to accurately measure her son’s carbohydrate intake to calculate his insulin dose.

While there were apps offering nutritional information for processed foods and meals in chain restaurants, every time Deborah wanted to cook at home, she had to spend ages adding up carb totals for every ingredient, as she was cooking.

When she started looking for apps that could help, Deborah couldn’t find anything that suited her needs. “I started researching the idea and consulting with diabetes dieticians and health professionals” she says, “and then I decided to go for it and do it.”

Deborah initially hired a local designer and an offshore developer to build the first version of Cook & Count in 2014. It was one of the first apps to get NHS approval and be listed on the NHS app library.

While the initial version of Cook & Count proved to be popular (regularly appearing in the App Store’s top 20 health and fitness apps), Deborah saw the potential to scale up and open the app up to people with other health goals, not just carbohydrate measuring. She applied for, and won, some local enterprise partnership funding and later joined the WebStart Bristol startup incubator. With support from WebStart, Cook & Count got their first Angel investor in April 2016.

Simpleweb are now working with Cook & Count on a new, scalable version of the app that will allow users to find out the nutritional content in home cooking to support a wide range of medical conditions.

Watch this space for updates!

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