The gut microbial community, or microbiome, has a close relationship with the health of its host, with the impacts of a disrupted gut microbiome ranging from altered metabolism to altered neurology and behavior. Researchers have identified many of the links between the microbiome and health, and now a team has developed and tested an automated workflow to proactively identify healthy vs. disease gut microbiome status. Testing the workflow on real-world data revealed four health patterns in healthy populations, with variations in microbial species composition and metabolic functioning across the patterns. A proposed health index correlated with host physiological and microbial indicators, but this framework can reveal the contributions of different microbial species to the health index across various diseases, which means this framework could facilitate individualized health assessment and identify biomarkers. The broad-spectrum disease-related species are identified by contribution spectrum analysis, and while more research is needed, it could contribute to improved personalized medicine by monitoring the gut microbiome.