• Aston University and BioCare Ltd are to build a smart, AI-powered app that can deliver tailored nutritional recommendations and inform lifestyle choices
• New technology will analyse complex data on an individual’s personalised health and behaviours, built using the latest developments in AI and machine learning
• Its personalised advice will empower individuals to make long-term improvements to their health and wellbeing.

Aston University and BioCare Ltd are working together to create a unique AI-powered digital health tool that can deliver personalised nutritional and lifestyle advice by analysing data from health tests and questionnaires.

Along with ongoing support, the app will empower its users to make long-term and lasting improvements to their health and wellbeing.

The Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) will bring together Aston University’s experts in AI, machine learning, and digital health technologies with the team at Birmingham-based BioCare.
The company is an international provider of nutritional supplements, professional guidance, and training for health and wellbeing practitioners. It currently offers guidance through its own model, called ‘Adaptive Health’. This identifies the unique genetic, physiological and environmental factors that need to be considered when making tailored nutritional recommendations to individuals.

To support the company’s growth, the KTP project will digitise and evolve this model, moving it from a paper-based practitioner-led approach to an AI-powered digital system that can be accessed by its own customers, nutritional advisors and their clients.

Achieving this in a digital app means incorporating AI and machine learning in ways that analyse several different types of data to build a complete digital picture of an individual’s health. It will bring together personalised health information from tests and details of habits, preferences and goals from tailored questionnaires.

The technology will be designed to provide more personalised recommendations about diet, lifestyle and supplement recommendations than are currently possible through the company’s existing model.

Crucially, the resulting app will be developed to strike a balance between supporting, rather than replacing, professional health and well-being advice.

BioCare will work on the three-year KTP with researchers in the Aston Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research and Application (ACAIRA). The Centre brings together expertise from several academic disciplines with industry partners to create new AI-powered technologies for some of the world’s biggest health, social and environmental challenges, while ensuring those technologies are sustainable, ethical and equitable.

Emma Ellis, managing director at BioCare, said: “Our goal is to develop a highly personalised digital health tool that will be central to, and valuable for, every individual customer, enhancing both their experience of nutritional support and their long-term wellbeing. Partnering with Aston University in a project like this provides unparalleled opportunities for mutual learning, as well as enhancing the credibility and robustness of the new technology we’re developing.”

Dr Harry Goldingay, senior lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Digital Technologies, and member of ACAIRA, said: “This project is about building technology that can look far beyond immediate fixes when it comes to nutritional advice. Instead, we’re developing new ways to use AI and machine learning to help better understand the unique set of differences that exist between each of us. The app will be designed to deliver guidance on how to make long-term and sustained improvements to health and wellbeing.”

Dr Shereed Fouad, senior lecturer in Aston University’s Department of Applied AI and Robotics, and health theme lead in ACAIRA, said: “By bridging academic research with the development of digital health technology, we’ll be empowering health experts with detailed insights while making a meaningful impact on a business and its customers. Projects like this mean I get to deliver great science while also expanding my experience of enterprise and innovation.”

Funded by Innovate UK, KTPs are collaborations between a business, a university and a highly qualified research associate. The UK-wide programme helps businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills. Aston University is a sector-leading KTP provider, ranked first for project quality, and joint first for the volume of active projects.