A data-driven digital platform that can predict optimal diet and lifestyle interventions for an individual. This will be the exciting outcome of Human Digital Twin. The technology will serve as a research platform to integrate and analyze objective health data, facilitating early detection of diseases and powering the development of personalized products and services.
What if… every consumer had their own ‘virtual twin’ that gives them insight into their health status, and provides personalized advice on diet, lifestyle and medicines?
Accompanied by cutting-edge devices, like ingestible sensors and apps, it would empower consumers to make moment-by-moment changes in diet and lifestyle. Which food products should they eat to improve their gut health? How does this link to their mental wellbeing?
Personalized intervention
Personalized interventions have proven to be more effective at improving health than one-size-fits all approaches. In our ageing society, where the number of people with chronic diseases is on the rise, they can make a great difference to quality of life and health care costs.
AI-guided, digital platform
In Human Digital Twin, OnePlanet Research Center is developing an AI-guided, digital platform for continuous collection, integration and analysis of health and nutrition data, in specific contexts, collected via sensors. Imagine, for example, an ingestible sensor providing data on microbiome and gut health. The platform gives insight into an individual’s risk of developing lifestyle related diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and burnout. The self-learning system also predicts which diet and lifestyle interventions will work best for each individual, and in which situation.
In this innovation program, experts from imec, specializing in high-tech sensors and wearables, are collaborating with nutritionists, behavioral experts and doctors from Wageningen University & Research, Radboud University and Radboudumc, to solve the complex issues that come along with such a disruptive innovation. How, for example, to ensure safe storage and ethical use of huge amounts of data? And what software and insights are needed to build in functionality that automatically optimizes motivational feedback to the individual?
Towards personalized advice
The digital data platform is being constructed using health data collected in OnePlanet’s innovation programs Ingestibles for Gut Health, Smart Bathroom for Health and Studies in Nutrition & Mental Wellbeing. Their experts have also initiated, in collaboration with industry, a study that will collect and integrate contextual data on stress and physiological functions such as heart rate and skin conductance. This will allow prediction of individuals’ stress levels and give personalized advice on stress reduction.
