Development of an Integrated Digital System for Home Meal Delivery Services to the Elderly in Taiwan

Background and Purpose: Taiwan’s rapidly aging population and a growing number of older adults living alone have created an urgent need for efficient home meal delivery services. These seniors often rely on community-based meal programs to maintain nutrition and independence. However, delivering these services at scale is complex, requiring integrated management of case records, volunteer coordination, delivery logistics, and incident reporting. Traditional manual or fragmented approaches struggle with this complexity, hindering service expansion. This project addresses the gap by developing an integrated digital system for home meal delivery targeted at vulnerable elderly in Taiwan, aiming to enhance delivery efficiency, enable scaling to more clients, and improve overall program management.

Methods: The system was developed using an Agile methodology, allowing iterative refinement and close collaboration with a well-known nonprofit experienced in elderly meal delivery. The resulting digital solution comprises three main components: (1) a case management system for tracking client data and scheduling; (2) a mobile delivery application (with supporting backend) for volunteers and staff to manage routes, record deliveries, and report issues in real time; and (3) a delivery map website for visualizing routes and service coverage. Both full-featured and simplified versions were developed to accommodate organizations of varying size and technical capacity. Frontline user feedback was incorporated throughout to ensure the platform is user-friendly and fits seamlessly into daily operations.

Results: The integrated system has been deployed in a large-scale meal delivery program and currently supports approximately 2,728 elderly clients per day across multiple districts. Since launch, it has processed 446,689 meal orders and logged 2,068 incident reports, which are addressed promptly through the system’s workflow. The digital system significantly improves efficiency: it is estimated to have reduced societal costs by about NT$1.06 billion and saved roughly NT$750,000 per year in personnel expenses by streamlining administrative tasks and optimizing resource allocation. These outcomes demonstrate substantial impact and validate the system’s capacity to handle complex service operations at scale.

Conclusions and Implications: This deployment illustrates how an integrated, user-friendly digital system can empower nonprofit providers to reach more at-risk seniors, enabling scalable and sustainable service expansion. In day-to-day operations, the system simplifies case management, streamlines delivery logistics with real-time data, and improves transparency via incident reporting and mapping. Frontline staff and volunteers readily adopted the system, confirming its usability. These improvements boost operational efficiency and enhance care quality by ensuring reliable meal provision and rapid response to issues. The availability of simplified versions also allows small organizations to adopt the system, fostering wider use. The significant cost savings and improved outcomes provide policymakers with evidence that investing in digital eldercare infrastructure can reduce societal costs and ease pressure on healthcare systems. Overall, the initiative highlights how agile development and cross-sector collaboration can yield a replicable system that markedly improves nonprofit service delivery while supporting efficient, scalable operations in elderly care.