Affordable Lifestyle Intervention w/ Precision Food

Inspiration

During my PhD at Stanford, I struggled as many graduate students do. But I worked to heal myself and others around me through lifestyle changes, education and coaching. A lot of those changes involved diet, exercise, sleep habits, and social growth.

Recently, I discovered the power of reading your own source code, as it were, via 3rd party sites that plug into 23andme. However, it's hard for providers and even Ph.D. educated patients alike to make sense of genomic data, especially if they are not trained in genomics or healthy living.

Need

Need for low cost, precisely targeted preventative care. Food can be medicine, but what food? What nutrients? What to eat or not eat?

What it does

gdb23 is a data prototype of a precision food / nutrition / preventative care intervention that suggests lifestyle changes tailored to the patient's individual genome.

How we built it

Imported 23andme data to sort through genes and connect relevant genes to appropriate education and provider-mediated interventions. Created individualized supplementation and meal plans based on personal genetics.

Challenges we ran into

Needed more discussion with genetic counselors and experts in genomic health.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Pivot to a more focused problem of nutrigenomics, building on knowledge of clinical/sports nutrition, food/fitness.

What we learned

Sometimes it's okay, especially if you are a founder or researcher, to go it alone for a while if you really believe in what you are doing. Still, it's great to ask for help early.