The goal of is to develop and demonstrate a platform for guiding EU citizens towards personalized nutritional plans, to contribute to reducing diet-related health disorders, as well as to study the relationship between diet and health conditions in children. The innovative framework support personalized nutrition based on a comprehensive set of metabolic, environmental and other factors validated through three clinical studies: one for personalized nutrition of young individuals with obesity or/and type 2 diabetes; the second focused on prematurely born infants and their lactating mothers, aiming at augmenting the nutritional value of human milk; the third exploring the relationship between nutrition and cognitive development in young individuals. NUTRISHIELD succeeded at creating a personalised platform for the young. The platform consists of novel methods & techniques, which analyse several biomarkers related to nutrition and health disorders. Based on findings, the platform then uses ICT, by expanding existing nutrition assistive mobile apps to provide feedback and steering people towards a better nutrition.
During the final period, the NUTRISHIELD platform was reshaped aiming to enhance user-friendliness to engage the end user, the children and their parents, in a pleasant and non-intrusive way. Both the final versions of the NUTRISHIELD app and dashboard were delivered. These dedicated to personalized nutrition tools have been designed in collaboration via the efficient collaboration between software developers, bioinformatics and AI experts, nutritionists, and medical doctors. The app offers an intuitive and efficient manner for patients to receive personalized nutrition advice, guidance on how to follow these advice (some of which are derived via complex machine learning algorithms), monitor the adherence to plan, as well as provide the health professional useful information on the nutritional habits of the patients, as well as the degree of adhesion to the personalized nutrition plan.
Moreover, a set of analysers, tools and techniques were demonstrated: the NUTRISHIELD urine analyser, the demonstration of an advanced protocol for the study of the human milk composition which avoids the use of expensive techniques, as well as the identify correlations between specific biomarkers and nutrition (e.g. Microtyping, metabolome, etc), while also deriving correlation between different biomarkers. Several demonstration activities took place to validate the NUTRISHIELD approach in clinical controlled settings, this includes the study of real samples from patients (human milk, faeces, urine, blood, as well data from questionaries) , the processing of data using advanced algorithms as well the use of the NUTRISHIELD analysers by hospital personnel.
