Register for free to
view the full innovation profile.
An AI framework linking the human microbiome to specific conditions, enabling bespoke healthcare products to be designed and produced
About
Everybody in the world has a unique microbiome. The microbiome is the aggregated genetic material of all the bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses that live within the human body, and which play a vital role in maintaining a robust immune system, a healthy gut, a resilient skin barrier and overall good health. A number of different industries therefore need to understand how microbiome composition and functionality is linked to health and wellbeing in order to develop a new generation of personalised treatments and products. Examples are understanding the role of the microbiome in disease progression and exploring the links between the microbiome, immune and nutritional systems and response to treatments. These industries include cosmetics & personal care, pharmaceutical, healthcare and food & beverage. Industries also need insights into the dynamic factors that influence the microbiome such as ethnicity, weather, age and hydration. The Hartree Centre collaboration of STFC and IBM Research Scientists has developed an AI framework to identify the link between a person’s microbiome and specific conditions, such as gingivitis or disease status, enabling bespoke personal healthcare products to be designed and produced. Insight is derived by using machine learning models to establish the relative impact that the abundance of each species in the microbiome has in driving the prediction of health and wellbeing. The AI solution can be in the form of a pipeline (or tool) that can be run via a command line or by using a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI), which can scale workloads from a personal computer up to super computer. This solution accelerates the deployment of new microbiome-based personalised treatments or products, such as toothpastes and moisturisers, to improve people’s health and wellbeing. The framework enables the simple development of user-specific tools for industry end-users which are easy to use and do not require ongoing data scientist and IT support.
Key Benefits
The system can support the operational decisions in respect to: • The design and release of new products and treatments • Marketing based on region, environment, season etc • Production planning and distribution (supply/demand optimisation)
Applications
• Cosmetics and Personal Care – e.g. linking microbiome composition to consumer wellbeing • Pharmaceutical – e.g. understanding how the microbiome affects our response to treatment and accelerating the development of microbiome based personal treatments • Healthcare – e.g. understanding how the microbiome composition effects our health and is linked to disease progression • Food & Beverage – e.g. testing for pathogenic microbes and monitoring food microbiome for contamination