Today's Edition
MAYS IBRAHIM (ABU DHABI)
As the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) Incubation and Entrepreneurship Center (MIEC) celebrates one year since its launch, its students are leaving their mark on the UAE's evolving tech landscape with innovative solutions.
One standout project is Nutrigenics Care, a platform leveraging AI for personalised dietary solutions.
Co-founded by Wafa Al Ghallabi and Omkar Thawakar, two PhD students from MBZUAI, Nutrigenics Care is on a mission to tackle dietary adherence for better health outcomes through personalised meal tracking and dietician-approved recipes.
It's supervised by Dr. Muzammal Naseer, an MBZUAI research scientist, and MBZUAI professors Dr. Salman Khan and Professor Fahad Khan.
Nutrigenics Care clinched first place at MBZUAI's Incubation and Entrepreneurship Centre (MIEC) Pitch Day and earned a place in the prestigious Microsoft Startups Founders Hub.
A Need for Better Meal Tracking
The idea for Nutrigenics Care was borne out of personal experiences and real-world challenges in the healthcare sector.
Al Ghallabi, who is pursuing a PhD in Computer Vision at MBZUAI, was struck by a story shared by her dietitian about the struggles patients face in maintaining a healthy diet and tracking their meals consistently, especially for those with chronic conditions like diabetes or thyroid disorders.
"Dietitians in hospitals often assign follow-up sessions a month apart," she explained in an interview with Aletihad.
"Patients struggle to remember what they ate or track their meals accurately. This lack of real-time data means the dietitian spends a lot of time in follow-up appointments just trying to piece together what went wrong. This is the gap we wanted to fill with Nutrigenics Care."
The platform offers a solution by providing real-time interactive charts that track a patient's dietary history, making it easier for dietitians to provide personalised, data-driven advice.
It also includes advanced meal tracking, where patients can log their meals and receive tailored meal suggestions from a database of over 200 high-quality recipes created by nutrition experts.
AI-Powered Meal Tracking
What sets Nutrigenics Care apart from existing diet-tracking apps is its integration of AI and machine learning.
The platform offers a unique feature where users can simply upload a photo of their meal, and the AI model will analyse the image to provide an accurate nutritional breakdown.
The platform's AI has been trained on a database of over 200,000 recipes and is designed to recognise various foods and provide precise nutritional labels for each meal, helping users stick to their diet plans with confidence.
Empowering Dietitians
Nutrigenics Care isn't just about helping users track meals - it's about fostering better engagement between dietitians and patients. The platform includes features that allow dietitians to interact directly with patients, monitor their progress, and provide personalised dietary solutions.
"The dietitian's role is not eliminated," said Al Ghallabi. "Our platform works closely with dietitians, providing them with the data they need to help their patients more effectively. It's about making their job easier, not replacing them."
This collaborative approach has earned Nutrigenics Care the approval of local healthcare institutions, which the students are currently working with to take their startup into the next phase of development.
MBZUAI's Incubation Centre
The start-up's journey has been well supported by MBZUAI's Incubation and Entrepreneurship Centre (MIEC), which promotes the growth of AI-powered businesses. The MIEC offers mentorship, resources and networking opportunities.
It was through this support that Nutrigenics Care refined its business model, developed its platform, and secured key partnerships, according to Al Ghallabi.
"We participated in numerous workshops, boot camps, and pitch events organised by MIEC," she said. "The guidance and advice we received from industry experts and professors were instrumental in shaping our platform. Winning first place at the MIEC Pitch Day and being accepted into the Microsoft Startups Founders Hub was a huge milestone for us."
The MIEC's AI-driven innovation ecosystem is designed to help startups like Nutrigenics Care navigate the challenges of early-stage development and commercialisation.
The centre not only offers technical and financial resources but also connects startups with key government entities, industry partners and investors.
As Nutrigenics Care moves toward pilot testing with key healthcare partners, the founders have their sights set on scaling their platform across the MENA region and globally. The next step is to integrate Arabic language support to cater to the diverse population of the UAE and the broader region.
"Our goal is to make Nutrigenics Care available to everyone, not just in the UAE, but across the region and even globally," Al Ghallabi said.
