Dear Reader,
The PROTEIN project aims to develop an end-to-end ecosystem that will engage people to a healthy, pleasurable, nutritional and sustainable diet by offering dietary and physical activity programs adapted to their needs and driven by their personal preferences, physical and physiological characteristics as well as their health status.
During the first 24 months of the project, a first version of the PROTEIN end-to-end ecosystem has been designed and developed from scratch. A mobile application (app) which helps the user to acquire (or maintain) a personalized healthy diet and lifestyle, will be made available to the public through the Google Play Store in December 2020, along with a web-based Dashboard for nutritionists and other experts to support monitoring their client and patient activity while they use the PROTEIN mobile app where appropriate.
The PROTEIN system and app are based on novel scientific achievements and include numerous novel technologies: ontology containing nutrition domain knowledge, image-based food identification and food weight estimation, food intake estimation based on smart scale data, eating rate analysis based on video or on smartwatch accelerometer data, bowel sound analysis using a smart belt, a novel Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) sensor, and, ultimately, an AI-based nutrition and physical activity advisor.
Upon release of the first version of the PROTEIN mobile application, the PROTEIN project will commence an extensive user testing programme (PROTEIN Pilots Phase I), which will last for six months. These ‘Pilots’ (for the usage of the PROTEIN ecosystem in real life conditions) will comprise of a series of 21 tests that will be conducted in various real life environments ranging from the simple user with a mobile device to the customers of a restaurant in Rome, and from the athletes of Benfica in Portugal to people living with obesity in Belgium or patients with Type 2 Diabetes in Germany.
Connect and stay tuned for further exciting news on our research and the results of the PROTEIN pilots!