Allergen Alert: Food and Cosmetic Safety Tool

The Project

A computer program and a mobile app called Allergen Alert was developed to detect a user’s personalized food and cosmetic allergens based on product labels and to alert them whether it is safe. It can also detect possible allergens not explicitly specified by user inputs, but through matching against a database of protein groups that may trigger cross-reactivity.

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Team Comments

I (& ~250 million others) suffer from food/cosmetic allergies. Allergen cross-reactivity makes it even more complicated. Currently, there is no easy to use personalised tool available to detect allergens & cross reactive allergens in commercial food/cosmetic products and alert the user.

Learning new technique (app development): Had to spend a lot of time learning. The science behind allergen cross-reactivity and coming up with a comprehensive database: Had to read so many research articles to collect data. It was extremely time-consuming. Learned how to manage time effectively.

Use natural language processing so that program is more robust. It would also eliminate false positives.