Hologram Sciences and Haleon poised to take personalized nutrition “to the next level”

16 Mar 2023 --- Consumer-facing health tech company Hologram Sciences has teamed up with consumer health innovators, Haleon. The companies say that the partnership will allow for experimentation and innovation in the areas of personalized nutrition, healthy aging and active nutrition.

On the heels of this announcement, NutritionInsight speaks with Ian Brady, the CEO of Hologram Sciences, about the partnership, its goals and what it holds for future innovations.

What are the specific consumer health concerns or unmet needs that Hologram is looking to address with this partnership and how will it meet them?
Brady: First, we’re very excited to be partnering with a company like Haleon at its scale. It has a global portfolio across leading wellness and OTC (over-the-counter) brands and our partnership is really focused around broad, healthy aging. That’s really a space that we’re both very curious about and we both believe there’s an opportunity to innovate on new products and services.

I think from both sides we approach the problem from a science perspective. First, we ask “what are the products that we believe might be effective for folks within the category of healthy aging?” I think we also want to make sure that this is something that can provide impact in terms of health benefits and outcomes in a short time period.

When you think about healthy aging, sometimes the benefits really aren’t clear for quite a long time, if it’s brain cognition or heart health or something like that. We are focused a bit more narrow in scope in areas where we can show an impact within six months or less.

Can you tell me a little bit more about the personalized nutrition innovation processes that Hologram Sciences will be leveraging in this partnership?
Brady: Hologram takes what we call a 3D approach. We focus on delivery formats – again, that could be novel products that we want to bring to market. We also focus on diagnostics to get an understanding at an individual level. Lastly, we focus on the digital experience that could accompany that and that could focus on things like engagement.

We combine those three aspects together to try to come up with a solution for the end consumer and that really determines the level of personalization depending on each case. We don’t go in with a fixed sort of mindset in terms of how personalized the offering needs to be. 

If we believe that someone needs some variety, you know that might be one way that we focus. If we believe that they need a N of 1 [a type of clinical that includes only one participant] and it’s a completely custom blended product with a completely custom coaching program, that’s an option as well. We really go in with a spectrum and then use case specification, landing within that spectrum in terms of how we define personalization.

How does Haleon’s human insights and trusted science fit in and integrate with these goals?
Brady: I think again, they take a science-first approach. Obviously, they have a massive reach in terms of the brands under their portfolio and the audience and customer bases for those brands. So the level of insights that they can bring to these conversations are very effective and interesting – they are the experts. 

I think what Hologram tries to bring from our perspective is really a unique innovation process that can allow us to look at a customer and really convert them into a consumer and unlock a lot more insights into who that person is and what they may be motivated by, or what they may be looking for to engage with brands today in a more holistic capacity.

What is the role that Hologram Sciences will play in the co-developing future supplementation concepts with Haleon?
Brady: Were pretty early in this process and can’t share too many details around the specifics or the entry point. We’re very focused on healthy aging as a broader category and the focus will be within the US to start. 

We’re identifying opportunities where we can really help take some of that customer base and identify new insights and build off of those insights. The difference for us is really around personalization and there’s a broad spectrum in terms of how that can be defined. But we want to be able to allow people to reach their health and wellness goals. 

Sometimes those goals are relatively complex, sometimes, they require a behavior change aspect, and that is all under our definition of personalization as well. I think we’re trying to look at it from a broader consumer perspective in terms of how we think about the combination of products and services as a new form of innovation.

You mentioned personalization as being one of the main things you’re working with here, how will that separate and differentiate these concepts and future products from offerings that are already on the market?
Brady: Right now, consumers are still jumping across various brands or experiences to try to solve their health questions. They could be going to a diagnostic company, they could be going to a digital app for some answers or thinking about walking into a retail experience and trying to figure out what’s on the shelf that could address their needs.

What we’re doing is connecting all those together and making it a one stop shop. One click to be able to provide feedback in terms of understanding what their symptoms are or what their health goals are and coming up with a personalized approach to address those. 

From Hologram’s perspective we have a platform that can support many different types of use cases. We’re typically diagnostic agnostic, meaning that we will plug in what we think is the right tools to allow someone to understand what’s going on in their bodies on an individual basis. We’re also relatively agnostic in terms of how we approach the solutions that we develop – it really is a customer first approach. 

Personalization is at the core of that, and we really want to define these new concepts, or any of these new brands, or help elevate existing brands, to provide that more holistic experience so the consumer has a much easier path to address their health goals.

Without giving too much away, can you tell us a little bit about what’s in store in the near and far future for Hologram Sciences?
Brady: We have a portfolio approach to health and wellness and we will continue to invest in areas to expand current markets. Specifically, in immunity health and women’s health. 

We also have additional partnerships where Hologram may co-invest in some companies. We’ve made an investment in partnership with a company called Momentous around human performance. 

We have a partnership with a novel diagnostic company out of Berlin with an at-home diagnostic to measure things like progesterone. We’re also now, through partnerships like this one with Haleon, looking at more of a co-development model where we can bring our innovation process to an existing partner with a very large brand and audience and collectively come up with new solutions.

There will just be more of that continuation of our existing brands, identifying new investment partnership opportunities as well as co-development opportunities in the future.

By William Bradford Nichols