Huilin Li

People share their bodies with trillions of microbes. They live on and inside the human body and they change and grow depending on diet and other daily activities. Microbes form, feed and protect people. Maintaining a good and balanced relationship with the microbiome is beneficial to human health. In recent years, microbiome science has developed rapidly and is likely to become a major contributor to our future understanding of health and healthcare systems. An example of such development is The Human Microbiome Project, which was launched to characterise the microbial communities found in the human body and to identify each microorganism’s role in our health and body functions. Several companies have been created to allow people to measure their own gut microbiomes. Although these achievements in gut microbiome should be celebrated, they mainly focus on measuring and testing the state of microbiome. It is imperative to look forward into the future and consider not just measuring microbiome, but also delivering services and products that utilise gut microbiome for healthier life.

This is an exploration of utilising the gut microbiome to promote the health condition of young adults, help them control their weight, and prevent and mediate obesity and diabetes.

MicroMe is an innovative and cutting-edge project that aspires to explore and utilise our understanding of the gut microbiome and its relationship with bodily functions. MicroMe builds on recent development and studies in the field of gut microbiome showing that microbes play an essential role in regulating people’s dietary patterns as well as exposures to chronic disease.

This project provides a new solution which uses fibre to stimulate the gut bacteria to produce short-chain fatty acids that synthesise insulin, which then regulate the blood sugar and the immune system. The project uses dietary fibre as a design tool to explore the possibilities of managing and controlling the gut microbiome in daily life. MicroMe attempts a technological breakthrough by utilising image recognition to identify and track fibre intake. Additionally, the project aims to raise awareness and educate society about microbiome science, making it more accessible to the general public.

MicroMe challenges the traditional concepts of nutrients and provides a new approach to curing diet-related chronic diseases. In order to create an enjoyable service system and practical solutions, experts and target users have been involved in the design process of this project. At this point, this project focuses on how to better control weight and prevent and alleviate obesity and diabetes. It has the potential to be developed further to prevent and medicate additional diseases in the future.

Image recognition is a part of computer vision and process to identify the object. It is not a new technology. However, the early application of image recognition is very simple, such as facial recognition. This project requires the system to give fibre contents after detection. The application of fibre food detection and fibre intake calculation does not exist on the market. Thus, it required more time to train data for deep machine learning, several models tested for this project.

The main contribution is that the idea makes technology become more integrated into people’s lives, and used for a practical purpose. Functions such as image upload and real-time detection are convenient for users, and it helps to improve their healthy consciousness.