Bayer Consumer Health uses AI to optimize personalized nutrition and healthy aging

With an aging global population, Bayer Consumer Health highlights the importance of improving people’s healthspan instead of advancing their lifespan. Nutrition Insight meets up with Aquil Harjivan, head of front-end innovation, to discuss the company’s advances in precision health for longevity and how AI can improve personalized nutrition to empower consumers.

Bayer Consumer Health recently launched its Age Factor ecosystem, the first holistic health offering of its Precision Health business unit. The ecosystem combines Bayer’s One A Day Age Factor Cell Defense healthy aging supplement with a companion app and Hurdle’s saliva-based Chronomics Biological Age Test. 

Harjivan says the company developed the ecosystem after learning that many consumers don’t know precisely how supplements impact their bodies. 

“They keep taking them with the faith that something good will happen. The aging space was seen as a mysterious black box people don’t know; they keep doing more and more without knowing its direction.” 

The ecosystem helps unlock what is happening in a consumer’s body through a test and lifestyle assessment. Moreover, consumers can access lifestyle guidance, behavior change programs and the accompanying supplements. 

“Ultimately, the hope and the long-term benefits are always that we’re trying to drive for healthspan, specifically in an aging environment, versus lifespan, largely because the population is aging. Initially, this was only in modern worlds or more mature markets; we now see that happening in developing countries as well.” 

Empowering consumers with precision health

The ecosystem is the first product of Bayer’s Precision Health business unit, launched in 2023. The company says this unit enables it to enter a “new era of healthcare,” focusing on personalization for better health outcomes. 

Harjivan says personalization enables people to do more with their health throughout their healthcare and self-care journey. It demystifies what’s going on in their bodies, empowers them to take action and treats them with the right solutions at the right time. 

“Today, people normally access online sources like Google or go to resources like influencers, and not all that information is fully trustworthy,” he adds. “In the ecosystem, we follow existing guidelines for healthcare, whether through nutrition, exercise, sleep or mental well-being, and guide consumers with those to enable behavior change in the short term and ultimately drive better health in the long term.” 

We recently discussed Bayer’s Age Factor ecosystem with Harjivan.Personalizing products is challenging, he adds. “We’ve had a few supplements in this space, but I’m keen to unlock the role of digital therapeutics. These digital software solutions are proven clinically, enabling certain conditions to be cared for differently and holistically.” 

Although the company traditionally creates physical products, like supplements and OTC (over-the-counter) medications, the ecosystem enables it to evolve communications and marketing. 

“The interesting side of this is that data will be exchanged between us and the consumers,” says Harjivan. “That can empower us to give them even better solutions, tailor things even better for them and adapt programs and healthcare solutions according to what they’re giving us back.” 

Leveraging the power of AI

Harjivan highlights that AI plays a key role in precision health. “True personalization will not be possible without it.” 

He predicts that digital transformation and the role of AI will impact and change people’s behavior and how they care for themselves. 

“Getting precision health right for consumers will be largely based on leveraging data to get us to the right places. How we partner internally and externally to unlock this opportunity, whether that’s commercialization, governmental influences, reimbursement and so on.” 

He points to three key areas to enable precision health — AI diagnostics, physical diagnostics — such as saliva tests to measure biological age — and product personalization. 

Harjivan details that AI diagnostics aims to answer questions such as “How can we give access to everyone, independent of affordability, given that they’re available online? How can consumers access solutions like that to empower decision-making to get better care?”

He highlights the importance of building mutually beneficial relationships with ecosystem partners, such as Hurdle, which provides the biological age test or Ada Health, which offers AI diagnostics. 

Harjivan says that true personalization in health and nutrition will not be possible without AI.Healthy aging

The WHO predicts that by 2030, one in six people will be 60 or older and that by 2050, 80% of older people will live in low- and middle-income countries. 

As aging is linked to health issues, like chronic diseases, more hospitalizations and a high burden for families and the healthcare system, Harjivan says it’s essential to ensure the healthcare system can take care of that aging population in 2050 and ease the burden for this aging population. 

“If the COVID-19 pandemic showed us anything, it was that we cannot have the healthcare systems that we have today taking care of a population that will need so much care. The best way to do that is to improve our health systems and have more physicians, but also to drive better health.” 

“Prevention is the key topic here: how do we, over the next 20 years, enable the 30–40-year-olds today to live the healthiest lives possible?” 

He predicts that health personalization and the digital transformation revolution can help drive this. 

New product development

Harjivan highlights that Bayer Consumer Health is building capabilities in precision health and keeping track of the evolving world of technology to expand its offering, considering what is happening in the market, consumer and healthcare demands and the company’s positioning.  

“The world’s our oyster, and if we think of abundance as a key theme and the unfortunate amount of challenges that we need to solve, we could do a lot,” he says. 

The company will continue to explore healthy aging and what this means. “I think there will be a constant evolution of how we can cater for more needs better, with the spirit always on improvement.” 

He says the company is also exploring other health areas, with new launches expected in the coming years. 

“One of them will be in the space of women’s health,” says Harjivan. “The second one is in the cardiometabolic space — for example, metabolic health and obesity — how we continue to cater for that, and what are the best solutions for consumers for everyday self-care?”