Health agencies around the world could soon have a better understanding of diet and allergy trends thanks to an innovative new partnership between The Data Lab, Scotland’s Innovation Centre for data and artificial intelligence, Robert Gordon University and LiberEat – the Scottish company behind the eponymous app providing restaurant and grocery dietary advice.
The Data Lab and LiberEat say the anonymised data generated could be used to enhance and inform health campaigns, interventions and dietary strategies for the general population.
More health-related data is being generated than ever before, especially through mobile apps. However, much of this information remains unsorted and unanalysed due to the time and personnel required to process it using existing methods.
It is hoped that conducting more detailed analysis will unlock previously unrecognised trends in diet and allergies.
To help unlock this valuable data, scientists at Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University have worked with LiberEat to enhance the anonymised data acquisition via the LiberEat app, which can help healthcare providers and other organisations better cater to the needs of this group.
Malcolm Price, project development manager for The Data Lab, said: “Our partnership will develop a first-of-its-kind system to make it significantly easier to anonymise, organise and analyse the volumes of valuable data on health that is currently not being utilised.
“Once in place, the analytics will be able to inform the healthcare sector, food retailers, producers and restaurants about dietary and allergenic patterns. This has the potential to transform how services can react much more quickly to food trends in society both in Scotland and internationally.”
Barry Leaper, LiberEat’s managing director, said: “The Data Lab’s support is allowing us to create a key resource that will help healthcare and food service organisations better meet the needs of people with dietary requirements.
“This is a key step forward for the company and it means we can begin helping the growing number of people with a dietary requirement on a much larger scale.”