Dahna aims to prevent cardiovascular diseases by offering people healthy menus

By Polya Pencheva

Do you know what healthy cooking truly means? Maybe not. And maybe that’s why we make tiny mistakes every day which affect our health. We sometimes pick up fast food or processed foods just to save time and energy. Two people from Romania created an online application to help people eat better and prevent cardiovascular disease. In today’s instalment of start-up of the day, Daniela Tatu Chitoiu had a chat with Innovation Origins. She spoke about the reasons behind setting up DAHNA, and about their goals and their challenges.

What does DAHNA actually do?

“Our app aims to change unhealthy eating patterns into healthy behaviors that will stick. DAHNA provides the user with personalized daily plans for the prevention of cardiovascular and associated diseases. After creating a cardiometabolic profile, the application evaluates the cardiometabolic risk and then offers customized menus and recipes according to the identified profile. The user can choose the appropriate menus and automatically create the ingredients list in the required quantities. Then at intervals, the application re-evaluates the cardiometabolic profile and provides a rundown of the user’s progress.”

How did the idea about DAHNA come about?

“The idea of ​​this app sprang up spontaneously while I was out shopping. My husband and I how unhealthy the food was the people bought. We figured that we could use a tool that gives you a grocery list of healthy foods really quickly, that is generated by predefined healthy menus and takes into account your own metabolic profile.

Our idea was to create a phone app for people who want to have an active and healthy life, but also for those who want to save precious time and money. We created the algorithm based on the recommendations of international medical practice guidelines.”

What motivates you to go to work every day?

“I’m a team-oriented person and that’s why I like to talk with my colleagues, users, and Dahna beta testers. I am also really pleased when we are able to figure out the final form of a new functionality, for one thing. I can’t wait to implement it and then test it. When the feedback is good that makes me feel proud of the team I work with. And the Road Map of this wonderful project has given me a lot of gratitude like this and will continue to do so. We want to change the lives of at least 100,000 people for the better with this digital tool. And it is this goal that motivates me to go to work every day.”

Miniature electrocardiogram device fits in one’s hand

It is much smaller than its hospital equivalents but its quality clearly equals them. The Polish start-up SmartMedics Sp developed a miniature ECG monitoring device, so the Warsaw University of Technology (WUT) in a press release.

Where is DAHNA now?

“We started DAHNA 3 years ago to educate people about the power of prevention in diet-related diseases and fatalities. We have a community of 29,000 people today. 32 percent use the app daily and 1,000 have subscriptions. They are only a small fraction of the potential. Cardiovascular disease threatens 2.5 billion people worldwide. The global pool for e-healthy commerce is our market.”

What are your future plans?

“Prevention of disease is the key to a healthier tomorrow. This drove me and my husband, a cardiologist with over twenty years of experience, to create DAHNA. And because we have a personal story to relate to, we are even more committed to changing lives. We want DAHNA to be the cardiometabolic food passport. It will eventually contain real-time biochemical data from our blood as well as our medical history, and will provide the information we need to customize our diets.”

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