Call for experts for NSAI’s new Malnutrition Committee

6th October 2025

NSAI is looking for experts to join a national committee for a new ISO standard around nutrition, malnutrition prevention, detection and treatment.

The International Standards Organisation (ISO) Food Products Technical Committee, ISO/TC 34, is producing a new international standard ISO 25815 titled: "Nutrition — Malnutrition Prevention, Detection, and Treatment."

This will primarily focus on best practices to prevent, detect, and treat malnutrition in adult and paediatric inpatients.

NSAI has established a National Mirror Committee "NSAI/TC 13/WG 31 Malnutrition" and is now seeking experts to join this new committee.

Opportunity to get involved in standards development

Interested parties that live in Ireland are welcome to register their interest with NSAI to participate at a national or international level in the development of the new international standard ISO 25815. Work on the standard commences in October 2025.

ISO 25815 will be based on the National Standard of Canada CAN/HSO 5066:2021, titled "Malnutrition Prevention, Detection, and Treatment"

This new international standard, provides hospitals with best practices to prevent, detect, and treat malnutrition in adult and paediatric inpatients.

Ready to register your interest? Please email Fergal Finn of our Standards Team (fergal.finn@nsai.ie) to request more information on NSAI/TC 13/WG 31 Malnutrition.

ISO 25815 addresses processes and protocols to:

• Identify patients at risk of malnutrition at admission;
• Diagnose malnutrition;
• Implement an integrated nutrition care plan to prevent and treat malnutrition;
• Provide nutritious and culturally acceptable food and reduce barriers to food intake for patients;
• Monitor nutrition intake and nutrition status changes for patients;
• Provide treatment for patients with malnutrition throughout their hospital stay;
• Facilitate organizational changes to implement and sustain improved nutrition care;
• Focus on nutrition care in the discharge plan when patients are transferred to other care and community settings

Commitment – what’s involved?

To participate, committee members are expected to invest their time in this voluntary activity, bringing technical competence and expertise in the area of food and nutrition to the role.

The national mirror committee will meet at the milestone stages where a draft of the Standard is circulated for review and comment.  Committee members can expect to receive three drafts of the Standard over a 12 -18-month period. NSAI will schedule committee meetings at these milestone stages to agree the national position and meetings will normally be hosted virtually for two-hour periods.

[Disclaimer: All reasonable effort was made to ensure that the information on this page was correct at the time of publication. Any views or opinions expressed on this page are not necessarily those of NSAI. NSAI accepts no responsibility or liability howsoever arising from the contents of this publication or any errors, inaccuracies, or omissions in the contents of the information provided therein.]