Methods and Systems for Generation of Personalized Health Plans
Personalized, health and performance programs are generated for individuals based on various biomarkers and performance and lifestyle assessments. In one embodiment, a diagnostic test of blood or other biological specimen(s) is used to determine key biological marker levels. Information and assessments of the user's physical performance, life style and health and wellness goals is also collected and provided to an expert system that matches the biomarker levels and assessments to a knowledgebase of scientific knowledge about biomarker levels and health and fitness outcomes. Personal recommendations and advice on nutrition and exercise is then generated, which may be used to help individuals reach their diet, fitness, and wellness goals and improve their physical and mental performance and well being in measurable ways.
This application claims priority to and the benefit of U.S. provisional patent application with Ser. No. 61/368,002 filed on Jul. 27, 2010, entitled “Methods and Systems for Generation of Personalized Health Plans.”
FIELD OF INVENTIONThe present invention relates generally to computer systems and processes for collecting information from a proprietary diagnostic panel and questionnaire that may be used for the purposes of enhancing of personal wellness through the creation of science based individualized lifestyle, fitness, dietary and nutrient plans.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTIONCurrent annual health care costs in the US are more than $3 trillion dollars and expected to increase over the next ten years to over $4 trillion. As of today, more than half of all Americans suffer from one or more chronic diseases and more than 75% of health care spending is to treat chronic conditions including cardiovascular disease and stroke, cancer, obesity, arthritis and diabetes. These serious diseases are often treatable but not always curable. Thus, an even greater burden befalls Americans from the disability and diminished quality of life resulting from chronic disease. These increased healthcare costs do not include costs due to loss of productivity resulting from chronic disease. The World Health Organization has estimated that eliminating certain major risk factors for chronic disease would result in an 80% reduction in the instances of heart disease, stroke, and type-2 diabetes, and a more than 40% reduction in cancer cases. These risk factors are linked to modifiable health behaviors that, if changed, can dramatically reduce the risk and prevalence of chronic disease.
A Center for Disease Control report identified four modifiable health risk behaviors that are responsible for much of the illness, suffering, and early death related to chronic diseases: 1) lack of physical activity, 2) poor nutrition, 3) tobacco use, and 4) excessive alcohol consumption. For example, frequent physical activity has been shown to increase longevity, help control weight, reduce risks for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and some cancers, strengthen bones and muscles, improve mental health and mood, improve one's ability to perform daily activities, and to prevent falls among older adults. Balanced nutrition can help lower the risk for many chronic diseases, including heart disease, stroke, some cancers, diabetes, and osteoporosis. For example, it has been established that the increased consumption of fruits and vegetables helps reduce the risk for heart disease and certain cancers.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recognized that preventive medicine and evidence-based medicine will become an important part of the healthcare system, and established the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force agency to oversee, define and implement a variety of preventive medicine measures.
The role of exercise and physical activity in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease is well established and its significance as a preventive measure is widely recognized. In addition, the correlation between athletic performance, body composition, and nutrition status has also been firmly established. The effect of balanced nutrition and its effect on the health of the population has also been subject of many studies. Further, population studies have identified certain blood/plasma biomarkers that are related to balanced nutrition and metabolism, as well as the presence of vitamins and micronutrients such as vitamin D, Iron, selenium, copper and zinc. The present invention leverages existing population-based evidence and provides a new, personalized approach to nutrition and exercise to improve health and wellness and prevent chronic diseases.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTIONThe present invention provides a computer-implemented and web-based personalized nutrition and exercise program and comprehensive wellness assessment. A unique panel of biomarkers from the user's blood or other biological specimen (such as: urine, buccal and nasal samples, exhalants, stool, tissues, organs, hair, nail clippings, or any other cells or fluids—whether collected for research purposes or as residual specimens from diagnostic, therapeutic, or surgical procedures) or devices capturing biological/biomedical activities, is assessed and provides information regarding the presence of vitamins, minerals, nutrients, cytokines and other messenger molecules. By biomarker we are inferring a biomarker, or biological marker, which is in general a substance used as an indicator of a biological state. It is a characteristic that is objectively measured and evaluated as an indicator of normal or impaired biological processes responses to an intervention of food, lifestyle or exercise. This biomarker information is paired and collected along with personal information about nutrition habits, wellness, physical fitness, and exercise regimens. Subsequently, an expert IT systems analyses process, derived from systems biology and artificial intelligence, is used to evaluate the collected data The expert analytic system includes a knowledgebase and an inference engine that provides optimal food, supplement, life style, and exercise recommendations for an individual according to their personal biology, physiology and personal habits.
The biomarker levels are collected through a blood test or test of other biological specimen(s) as defined above. Responses to a questionnaire provide information about the demographic, nutritional and physical habits of the individual. The web-based application provides the individual with her personalized optimal nutrition, supplement, life style, and physical training regime by matching her profile with the knowledgebase of facts about known relationships among biological specimen, demographic, and phenotypic data manually derived from scientific publications, databases and clinical trials.
Therefore, in one aspect of the present invention, a system facilitates the derivation of a personalized health and fitness plan for an individual. The system includes a data storage device for storing an electronic knowledgebase of medical and health data from various sources as well as for storing a set of questions. The system also includes an inference engine for a subset of the set of questions to send to the individual based on the knowledgebase and biomarker data gathered for the individual. The inference engine further generates lifestyle recommendations for the individual based on the biomarker data and the answers to the subset of questions. The system further enables transmission of these recommendations to the individual.
In some implementations, the system contains biomarker data for the same biomarkers and individual from different points in time. In further implementations, the computerized comparison includes comparison of these two different sets of biomarker data.
In certain embodiments, the biomarker data is gathered from blood or some other biological specimen of the individual. In certain embodiments, the system includes creatine kinase or ferritin as biomarkers. In other embodiments, the questions presented to the individual include questions about demographic data or questions about athletic activity. In still other embodiments, the lifestyle recommendations include dietary recommendations or exercise recommendations.
In another aspect of the present invention, a computer-implemented method facilitates the derivation of a personalized health and fitness plan for an individual. The method includes collecting biomarker data for the individual and determining questions to present to the individual based on a comparison between that biomarker data and an electronic knowledgebase of medical and health data from various sources. The method also includes presenting the questions to the individual and receiving the answers. The method further includes generating lifestyle recommendations for the individual based on the biomarker data and answers to questions. The method finally includes transmitting the recommendations to the user.
The method may, in some cases, include collecting a second set of biomarker data from the individual for the same biomarkers and comparing these two sets of biomarker data to discern the difference. In certain embodiments, the biomarker data is gathered from blood or some other biological specimen of the individual. In certain embodiments, the system includes creatine kinase or ferritin as biomarkers. In other embodiments, the questions presented to the individual include questions about demographic data or questions about athletic activity. In still other embodiments, the lifestyle recommendations include dietary recommendations, supplements recommendations or exercise recommendations. In some embodiments the biomarkers include biometric measurements. Examples of biomarkers are selected from, but not limited to: Blood pressure, heart rate, exhaled volume, body temperature, perspiration rate, skin conductivity. In some embodiments of the invention biomarker characteristics and profiles collected may be indicative of a disease process and could be used to detect such processes. Examples of diseases are selected but not limited to metabolic diseases, cancer, anemia, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes. In some embodiments biomarkers will comprise SNP biomarkers (DNA based). The most useful biomarkers in this group are SNPs that are associated with metabolism and energy.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description of the invention and the following detailed descriptions are exemplary, but are not restrictive, of the invention.
The accompanying drawings, which are included to provide a further understanding of the invention and are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and together with the description serve to explain the principles of the inventions.
Appendix A illustrates example of biomarkers.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTIONThe detailed description set forth below, in connection with the associated drawings, is intended to provide a description of the presently-preferred embodiments of the invention, and is in no way intended to limit the forms in which the present invention may be construed or used. Accordingly, it is well-understood by those with ordinary skill in the art that the same or equivalent functions may be accomplished by different embodiments that are also intended to be encompassed within the spirit and scope of the present invention. Moreover, with respect to particular method steps, it is readily understood by those with skill in the art that the steps may be performed in any order, and are not limited to any particular order unless expressly stated or otherwise inherent within the steps. Reference will now be made in detail to the preferred embodiments of the present invention, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings.
In one embodiment of the invention, the expert system as illustrated in
In one embodiment of the invention, knowledgebase 304 may contain information regarding relationships between biomarkers, food, supplements, and outcomes. Such outcomes may include changes in athletic performance, well-being, sleep, and mental stability. The information in knowledgebase 304 may be collected from scientific research publications, guidelines issued by medical associations, and large healthcare-derived databases of biomarkers, nutrition, fitness and wellness data. In one embodiment of the invention, inference engine 305 may use artificial intelligence algorithms in order to determine, based on analyst range 302, individual diagnostic results 303, and knowledgebase 304, what interventions can optimize the fitness and wellness of the user. These artificial intelligence algorithms may use any number of machine learning and systems biology inference methods well known in the art in order to generate effective inferences based on analyte range 302, individual diagnostic results 303, and knowledgebase 304. As illustrated in
In one embodiment of the invention, knowledgebase 304 may be constructed using a relational database system containing data organized in tables relating to individual concepts, their relationships to each other, additional qualifiers to these relationships, and references to the peer-reviewed article, clinical study or database from which they were curated. These concepts may include such topics as food, supplements, biomarkers, and outcomes, their relationships to each other. These relationships between concepts may include such items as contains, increases, optimizes at certain level, and releases. In such an embodiment of the invention, knowledgebase 304 may be constructed using several techniques, including: (i) manually entering findings into the system from scientific papers and clinical trials about concepts and their interaction (simplified example: concept1=‘low serum iron’ relationship=‘causes’ concept2=decrease in endurance performance’), (ii) by converting information from other databases (e.g. content of food), and (iii) automatically from accumulation of customer data including previous data processed by the expert system (e.g. information about success rates of certain recommendations). If a relational database management system is used for the construction of knowledgebase 304 or data store 301, any off-the-shelf product such as MySQL Database, Microsoft SQL Server, or IBM DB2 database may be used. It is foreseen that a relational database management system may be chosen for particular technical benefits provided as to size of storage on disk or performance of data retrieval. Non-relational database management system solutions are also foreseen that make use of alternative storage and data access techniques.
In one embodiment of the invention, the validity of the facts collected and the markers used may be strengthened by confirming data in knowledgebase 304 using gene expression microarray experiments. These markers may be either directly implicated, or they are inferred as in the same pathway as the markers captured in the knowledgebase (example 2).
When the input data changes, either through addition of new biomarker measurements or new personal information (wellness and fitness assessments and goals), inference engine 305 may use both forward and backward chaining to derive new or updated recommendations. For example, to infer the right food to battle a certain marker imbalance, inference engine 305 may use backward chaining. In order to detect whether this marker may be influenced through different kinds of exercises or whether it is affected by ethnic background, inference engine 305 may use forward chaining.
When making these inferences, the expert system may use a mechanism that can make complete deductions (any logically valid implication) instead of sound deductions (only deriving correct results). To decide between the various available deductions, inference engine 305 may apply a weighting system based on the success or failure of past personal recommendations 306, thereby creating a self-learning system. In order determine the success or failure of personal recommendations 306, it is foreseen that the system may store the relationship between individual diagnostic results 303 and personal recommendations 306 as well as an identifier for the user so that subsequent individual diagnostic results 303 for the same user can be compared to the previous individual diagnostic results 303 and previous personal recommendations 306 in order to determine the changes in the user's biomarkers after having received personal recommendations 306. Such knowledge may allow the system to modify the personal recommendations 306 given to individual users in subsequent processing of their individual diagnostic results 303 in order to improve the health outcomes of those users.
In the embodiment of the invention illustrated in
As illustrated in
Corresponding to various parts of the detailed description to this point, a preferred embodiment of the present invention contains the following process workflow:
- 1. Measure the level of 2 to 100 biomarkers from the user.
- 2. Use the expert system to generate further qualifying questions about age, ethnicity, exercise, diet etc.
- 3. User completes the questionnaire.
- 4. Use the expert system to generate recommendations.
- 5. Deliver recommendations online.
- 6. Repeat and refine.
As illustrated in
The upper right panel shows the model constructed based on the gene expression results. One of the key processes identified to be up-regulated by exercise by this system biology analysis is creatine kinase (CK). The CK gene, CKMT2, is shown to be up-regulated in most of the trained subjects. The lower right panel shows the current knowledge about CK as a muscle injury marker. The lower left panel presents possible interventions to relieve muscle injury identified by a high level of CK. In summary, this example emphasizes the capabilities of gene expression analysis with a system biology approach to identify relevant athletic markers and to connect those to dietary and exercise interventions in such a way that can be used by various embodiments of the present invention.
In another exemplary embodiment of the present invention, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data may be used as input. NHANES data are unique in that they combine blood biomarker levels with information from interviews about life style habits and physical exams. Relevant information about blood biomarkers is extracted from these data and organized by age, gender and ethnicity.
The system may also be provided as an article of manufacture having a computer-readable medium with computer-readable instructions embodied thereon for performing the methods and services described in the preceding paragraphs. In some embodiments, the functions may be executed on one or more computers, tablets, smart phones or other computing devices having the processor(s) and memory necessary to implement the system and methods described herein. In some instances, the functionality of methods of the present invention may be embedded on a computer-readable medium, such as, but not limited to, a floppy disk, a hard disk, an optical disk, a magnetic tape, a PROM, an EPROM, CD-ROM, or DVD-ROM or downloaded from a server. The functionality of the techniques may be embedded on the computer-readable medium in any number of computer-readable instructions, or languages such as, for example, FORTRAN, PASCAL, C, C++, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Java, JavaScript, Flash Script, C#, Tcl, BASIC and assembly language and executed by one or more processors. Further, the computer-readable instructions may, for example, be written in a script, macro, or functionally embedded in commercially available software (such as, e.g., EXCEL or VISUAL BASIC).
Appendix A illustrates exemplary biomarkers that could be used in the performance of current invention.
Claims
1. A system for deriving a personalized health and fitness plan for an individual, said system comprising:
- a data storage device for storing (i) an electronic knowledgebase of medical and health data collected from a plurality of sources and (ii) a plurality of questions;
- an inference engine for (i) determining, based on a computerized comparison between said knowledgebase and biomarker data for a plurality of biomarkers for said individual, a subset of said plurality of questions to be presented to said individual and (ii) generating, based on said biomarker data and answers received from said individual to said subset of said plurality of questions, a series of lifestyle recommendations specific to said individual; and
- a communication server for transmitting said series of lifestyle recommendations to said individual over a secure network connection.
2. The system of claim 1, wherein said electronic knowledgebase includes second biomarker data for said plurality of biomarkers having been collected for said individual prior to said biomarker data.
3. The system of claim 2, wherein said computerized comparison between said knowledgebase and said biomarker data includes comparison between said biomarker data and said second biomarker data.
4. The system of claim 1, wherein said biomarker data is collected using a sample of blood from said individual.
5. The system of claim 1, wherein said biomarker data is collected using a biological specimen from said individual where said biological specimen does not comprise blood.
6. The system of claim 1, wherein said plurality of biomarkers comprises creatine kinase.
7. The system of claim 1, wherein said plurality of biomarkers comprises ferritin.
8. The system of claim 1, wherein said subset of said plurality of questions comprises questions about said individual's demographic data.
9. The system of claim 1, wherein said subset of said plurality of questions comprises questions about said individual's athletic activity.
10. The system of claim 1, wherein said lifestyle recommendations comprise dietary recommendations.
11. The system of claim 1, wherein said lifestyle recommendations comprise exercise recommendations.
12. The system of claim 1, wherein said biomarkers comprise: Creatine Kinase, Magnesium, Calcium, Ferritin, Folate, Vitamin B 12, Vitamin D, Hemoglobin, Lactic acid, White Blood Cells, IL6, Thiamin, Sodium, Zinc, Glycerol, Glutamine, IL-Ib, sTNF-R I, CRP, b-2 micro globulin, Neopterin, TNF-a
13. The system of claim 1, wherein said biomarkers comprise: Beta-2-microglobulin, IL6, Calcium, Calcitonin, Ferritin, Sodium, GCSF, CRP, Folate, IL2, Creatin Kinase, Vitamin BI2, IL1b, Magnesium, Vitamin D
14. A computer-implemented method for deriving a personalized health and fitness plan for an individual, said method comprising the steps of:
- collecting biomarker data for a plurality of biomarkers for said individual;
- determining, based on a computerized comparison between said biomarker data and an electronic knowledgebase of medical and health data collected from a plurality of sources, a series of questions to be presented to said individual;
- presenting said series of questions to said individual;
- receiving answers to said series of questions from said individual;
- generating, based on said biomarker data and said answers, a series of lifestyle recommendations specific to said individual; and
- transmitting said series of lifestyle recommendations to said individual over a secure network connection.
15. The method of claim 14, further comprising the steps of:
- collecting second biomarker data for said plurality of biomarkers for said individual at a time subsequent to said step of transmitting; and
- comparing said biomarker data to said second biomarker data in order to determine the difference between said biomarker data and said second biomarker data.
16. The method of claim 14, wherein said biomarker data is collected using a sample of blood from said individual.
17. The method of claim 14, wherein said biomarker data is collected using a biological specimen from said individual where said biological specimen does not comprise blood.
18. The method of claim 14, wherein said plurality of biomarkers comprises creatine kinase.
19. The method of claim 14, wherein said plurality of biomarkers comprises ferritin.
20-25. (canceled)
Type: Application
Filed: Jun 23, 2014
Publication Date: Oct 16, 2014
Inventors: Gil Blander (Lexington, MA), Christian Reich (Cambridge, MA), David Lester (Kew)
Application Number: 14/312,304
International Classification: G06F 19/00 (20060101);