Along with ongoing support, the app will empower its users to make long-term and lasting improvements to their health and wellbeing.
The Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) will bring together Aston University’s experts in AI, machine learning, and digital health technologies with the team at Birmingham-based BioCare.
The company is an international provider of nutritional supplements, professional guidance, and training for health and wellbeing practitioners. It currently offers guidance through its own model, called ‘Adaptive Health’. This identifies the unique genetic, physiological and environmental factors that need to be considered when making tailored nutritional recommendations to individuals.
To support the company’s growth, the KTP project will digitise and evolve this model, moving it from a paper-based practitioner-led approach to an AI-powered digital system that can be accessed by its own customers, nutritional advisors and their clients.
Achieving this in a digital app means incorporating AI and machine learning in ways that analyse several different types of data to build a complete digital picture of an individual’s health. It will bring together personalised health information from tests and details of habits, preferences and goals from tailored questionnaires.
The technology will be designed to provide more personalised recommendations about diet, lifestyle and supplement recommendations than are currently possible through the company’s existing model.
Crucially, the resulting app will be developed to strike a balance between supporting, rather than replacing, professional health and well-being advice.
BioCare will work on the three-year KTP with researchers in the Aston Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research and Application (ACAIRA). The Centre brings together expertise from several academic disciplines with industry partners to create new AI-powered technologies for some of the world’s biggest health, social and environmental challenges, while ensuring those technologies are sustainable, ethical and equitable.
Emma Ellis, managing director at BioCare, said: “Our goal is to develop a highly personalised digital health tool that will be central to, and valuable for, every individual customer, enhancing both their experience of nutritional support and their long-term wellbeing. Partnering with Aston University in a project like this provides unparalleled opportunities for mutual learning, as well as enhancing the credibility and robustness of the new technology we’re developing.”
Dr Harry Goldingay, senior lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Digital Technologies, and member of ACAIRA, said: “This project is about building technology that can look far beyond immediate fixes when it comes to nutritional advice. Instead, we’re developing new ways to use AI and machine learning to help better understand the unique set of differences that exist between each of us. The app will be designed to deliver guidance on how to make long-term and sustained improvements to health and wellbeing.”
Dr Shereed Fouad, senior lecturer in Aston University’s Department of Applied AI and Robotics, and health theme lead in ACAIRA, said: “By bridging academic research with the development of digital health technology, we’ll be empowering health experts with detailed insights while making a meaningful impact on a business and its customers. Projects like this mean I get to deliver great science while also expanding my experience of enterprise and innovation.”
Funded by Innovate UK, KTPs are collaborations between a business, a university and a highly qualified research associate. The UK-wide programme helps businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills. Aston University is a sector-leading KTP provider, ranked first for project quality, and joint first for the volume of active projects.
About Aston University
For over 130 years, Aston University has been making our world a better place through education, research and innovation. Our history is intertwined with the remarkable city of Birmingham, once the heartland of the Industrial Revolution and now the thriving base for an innovation ecosystem of global significance, which Aston is co-creating.Our vision is to be a leading university for science, technology and enterprise, measured by the positive transformational impact we achieve for our people, students, businesses and the communities we serve.
Aston focuses on high-quality, exploitable research that has an impact on society through medical breakthroughs, advancements in engineering, policy and practice in government, and the strategies and performance of business.
The university offers a range of undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes, as well as continuing professional development solutions.
Thanks to its focus on delivering excellent outcomes for students, Aston University's reputation continues to grow. It was recognised as the Daily Mail University of the Year for Student Success 2025, is second in England for social mobility (2023 HEPI Social Mobility Index), and is top 20 for graduate salaries (2024 Longitudinal Education Outcomes).
Aston University is now defining its place in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (and beyond) within a rapidly changing world.