NutraTek is a Canadian supplement manufacturer that specializes in improving neuro-psychiatric health through micronutrient therapy. Their products have been shown in double-blind, placebo-controlled studies to improve the symptoms of depressed, bipolar, and even schizophrenic individuals. The company was facing the challenge of economically acquiring scientific research to improve and validate their products.
At the time, custom multivitamins were a growing segment of the market. However, most custom supplements didn't actually offer that much customization, and they were not tailored to the individual, but rather broad groups. And certainly none of them were formulated with the express purpose of improving mental health. The challenge was that such fine-grained customization was unheard of. In order to make it a reality, they would need to be able to gather enough data to make that kind of customization meaningful. But this challenge presented an opportunity.
NutraTek were already looking for ways to gather more clinical or clinical-like data for their product. They directly collected information from a large base of users, however it was performed by human staff and thus not scalable and not precise enough. If they could harness that base of users by building a data collection system that allowed them to enter in data themselves, they could begin to collect data on a wider scale and begin offering scientifically tailored supplements. I proposed the development of a Personal Health Tracker in order to do this. With that, the project was born.