The Institute for Preventive Health invites parties to join this consortium for the development of a digital twin for automated personalized and sustainable dietary advice. The project involves researchers from Wageningen University & Research, Eindhoven University of Technology and Utrecht University.
| Deadline call for partners: 25 August 2023 Project duration: January 2024 – December 2027 |
Unhealthy diets are the primary cause of global disease burden, with over 2 billion adults now being overweight or obese, and the prevalence of diabetes nearly doubling in the past 30 years. Not only does our current diet harm human health, it also poses a threat to planetary health due to its significant environmental impact. Hence, there is an urgent need to transition towards healthier and more sustainable diets.
Emerging evidence shows that each of us reacts differently to food, underscoring the importance of personalized dietary advice. Such personalized advice can empower individuals, increase their motivation to make lifestyle changes, and improve their overall health.
Low-cost digital tool
The ultimate goal of this project is to develop a low-cost digital tool that provides automated personalized and sustainable dietary advice in the form of meal plans or recipes that:
- reduces post-meal glucose and environmental impact, thereby improving both personal health and planetary health in the long term,
- is tailored to an individual’s physical requirements, preferences and social and environmental context, thereby promoting behavior change.
Building and testing a digital twin
Our aim is to develop 3 necessary building blocks for creating a digital twin that provides automated personalized dietary advice for improved personal and planetary health:
- predicting individual post-meal glucose responses using phenotypic data,
- expanding these models with real-time monitoring data for identification of foods that result in personal, beneficial post-meal glucose responses,
- translating the algorithm output into automated, effective delivery of personalized and sustainable dietary advice, i.e. recipes, meal plans, or product recommendations
The effects of the generated personalized dietary advices on behavior change, health outcomes, and diet sustainability will be tested in a clinical trial or field study.
Consortium partners can test the effects of their products on personal glucose responses and will be involved in the development of next generation dietary advice using recipe databases and product recommendation systems.
Join our consortium
The above described proposal will be submitted for funding to the TKI Agri & Food call, a Dutch governmental program sponsoring applied research. The budget is estimated between 1-1.7M€. Aiming for up to 5 partners each annually contributing 20k€ cash and 20k€ in kind. Small companies (MKB, start-ups, etc.) can contribute less. Granted projects receive an additional 50% subsidy funding.
All interested parties are welcome to join us in this public-private partnership. We are specifically looking for participation of food and beverage companies, ingredient companies, retail and supermarkets, health and wellness companies, e-health/medical device/technology companies, health(care) providers, and health insurance companies. In return for in-cash and in-kind contributions to the project, partners can specify desired topics for research, and provide direction to the research activities within this call.
We also invite parties from academia and research institutes to join our consortium. We are not able to respond to inquiries from students.