Personal Nutrition
Getting personal
The economic potential of personalised nutrition
The ability to produce highly customised nutrients tailored to the specific health needs of individuals is increasingly attainable, creating a market for foods, devices, and services related to these products with implications that cut across a number of policy areas from better addressing the health challenges of specific groups and supporting a preventative approach to healthcare, to promoting the growth of existing and emerging industry sectors. Additional Research, working with Context Economics, undertook research on the economic potential of the Personalised Nutrition sector in Scotland.
Personalised nutrition is an emerging industry arising from the intersection of healthcare services, information technology and mobile technology. It can be defined as the provision of specific dietary information and products based on an individual’s nutritional needs. Delivery may be through a system including apps, DNA tests and foods that enable an individual to maintain optimal health and contribute to the prevention of non-communicable dietary related diseases.
Our research, carried out on behalf of Scottish Enterprise, extended knowledge about market trends and opportunities associated with personalised nutrition. Highlighted findings from the research included the rapidly growing nature of the market internationally in diverse areas such as food intake measurement, health measurement, data modelling, targeted and personal advice, as well as food and drink purchasing and preparation. Major players from a range of sectors, such Bayer, Nestlé and IBM, are actively developing personalised nutrition solutions.
“Scotland has significant strengths in many aspects of an emerging personalised nutrition cluster.”
The study confirmed that Scotland has significant strengths in many aspects of an emerging personalised nutrition cluster including an active and diverse company base, a range of investment actors, broad based and internationally significant basic research activities, a wide range of supporting specialist services, as well as strong allied cluster activities in food & drink and life sciences.
Initial economic modelling suggests the potential benefits Scotland in jobs and economic output are significant. The prize is to capture a larger share of the market opportunity through an active strategy that supports a dynamic sector and market-leading companies to take advantage of Scotland’s strengths in nutrition R&D, data-modelling/AI, food & drink and medical technologies. There are also likely to be wider preventative health benefits and cost savings to the public sector from the development of personal nutrition solutions.
A number of specific recommendations were contained in the report to further support cross-sectoral coordination and leadership to maximise the opportunities for Scotland and the research will help stakeholders in personalised nutrition to further develop strategies to respond to the emerging opportunities.
Alastair McPherson, Additional Research.