Innovative sensors and AI boost People Science’s clinical trial research

US-based People Science leverages technological innovations to conduct clinical trials from people’s homes, researching various health benefits, such as sleep support, gut, metabolic, and women’s health. In our final installment exploring the company’s decentralized clinical trials, its co-founder and co-CEO, Noah Craft, MD, Ph.D., highlights technological advances and focus areas for future research.

The company aims to bring the tools of science to as many people as possible. Its mobile app, Chloe, allows more people to join trials than traditional options, which require participants to travel to research centers multiple times. Through Chloe, people across the US can join trials and receive products and sensors to monitor their progress. 

“There are incredible technology innovations around us, and we put it all together and make your home a research center. People who do traditional trials don’t realize you can measure all those things at home,” Craft tells Nutrition Insight. 

“In our company, we do home phlebotomy, urine collection, skin swabs, vaginal swabs, and continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). There are also newer, consumer-grade EEGs to measure your brainwaves.” 

He notes that the team sees itself as an experimentalist — “You have an idea and then you test it to determine if it’s true or likely to be true.”

Sensor technology advances

People Science benefits from other innovators who are advancing technology. Craft highlights developments in AI and sensors, for example, noting that CGMs are improving yearly. 

“We do a lot of work with innovative sensors,” he details. “There are sensors that measure components of sweat. For athletes, you can directly see how much you’re sweating and what’s in it. We aggregate whatever the interest of the client is. For example, we just did a study with that where we sent everyone a brand new Oura Ring.” 

These rings detect daily movement and heart rate, assess sleep and stress, and measure body temperature and heart rate.

Smart rings like the Oura ring detect daily movement and heart rate, assess sleep and stress, and measure body temperature and heart rate.External devices in women’s health are getting very sophisticated. For example, Craft says these can monitor temperature data minute by minute and predict symptoms. “There’s research around predicting fertility, or how many days it is to deliver your baby.” 

Meanwhile, he underscores the importance of combining sensors with user evaluations in specific research areas, such as sleep. 

“The device can measure exactly your sleep stages, such as when and how long you slept, but it can’t tell you how well rested you feel the next day. That’s what sleep experts care about — Do you feel rested or not?” 

Craft says that People Science does both. “We ask people the next morning, ‘Do you feel rested?’ We also measure your sleep, and different products work better on one or the other.” 

On top of sensors, he sees benefits in using AI, especially in generating ideas and hypotheses that researchers can test. “You can also detect trends that your eyes and brain can’t solve independently.” 

“Generative AI can save human hours, and it’s not deciding anything by itself, but that notion, can you make the research even more affordable because fewer humans need to be involved?” 

Targeted nutrition research

Craft says People Science works broadly with a mainly market-driven pipeline of clients and products. 

“We built Chloe to tolerate just about any study you would want to do. Each study gets customized and configured to your specific product and the things you’re interested in.” 

Significant research areas for the company are metabolic health, such as weight loss, appetite suppression, and rebound from GLP-1s, and women’s health, including fertility, premenstrual cramps, perimenopause, and menopause. “Innovating more and more in women’s health will continue to be important for us,” says Craft.

People Science is also “studying things common between men and women but focusing on how women respond,” he adds. “Our company is 80% women, founded and led by women, and we strongly focus on that.” 

Craft says AI can help generate ideas and hypotheses, although he stresses the importance of verifying underlying data.Under metabolic health, the company also examines glycemic control and products that blunt people’s glycemic response. “We just studied the CGM, and we ship people rice, ask them to eat it, and watch the monitor to see what happens at home.” 

Moreover, it conducts trials in cognition, mood, anxiety, and skin health. The company’s research covers a wide range of products, such as functional mushrooms, probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, nutraceuticals, supplements, food, and nutrition. 

Future focus areas: Microbiome and AI

Craft believes more companies will assess people’s microbiomes in a “deep scientific way” and give personalized recommendations to consumers based on that analysis. 

“When I was in medical school, we were taught all bacteria are bad,” he adds. “Now, the answer is re-establishing diversity and balance in your microbes. We are just starting to appreciate that our microbes are us.” 

“I’m a big fan of companies that can sequence the microbiome. We can collect and organize the stool, but companies have sophisticated ways to test your microbiome and figure out what you should do next. That’s going to be exciting.” 

Although Craft explains that People Science doesn’t provide consumer recommendations, these developments drive the business. 

He also expects AI to play a more significant role in the nutraceutical industry. Consumers can search Google for supplement recommendations, which scores different personalized options with AI. 

“AI is combing through published science, and soon it will be combing raw data,” predicts Craft. “For brands and ingredient companies that are not investing in science — the AI will not recognize their Amazon score; it will recognize their science. That’s coming and probably good for the world, but it will get complicated.” 

At the same time, he stresses that if AI recommends a supplement for a specific benefit, “I want to see the data.”