Longevity as New Government Strategy

Citizens of progressive technocracy driven countries can expect healthier, happier, and longer lives. As smart governments utilize progress in all sectors of the Longevity industry to maximize the health, wealth, and wellness of their citizens, Longevity will become a major electoral talking-point and policy priority that will determine the success of parties and politicians.

Government has two roles in moving the Longevity industry forward: national initiatives such as social care, financial reforms, and infrastructure for precision medicine ecosystems, and intergovernmental initiatives for marshaling key technologies, resources, and experts from nations around the world. Longevity development strategies are necessary on a national scale in order to enact these reforms, and necessary on an international scale to utilize the long term strengths of each individual state. Any government wishing to seize the Longevity Dividend must develop a national Longevity development strategy.

• The Longevity industry is multi-faceted consisting of Geroscience R&D, P4 Medicine, AgeTech, and Novel Financial Systems.
• Although the challenges of realistic assessment and forecasting of such a complex industry are great, they are not unsolvable.
• The financial industry has a specific role to play in the development of the global Longevity sphere.?
• It will be necessary for novel financial systems to be developed which monetize Healthy Longevity, and repeatedly reinvest in the technologically-reinvigorated working population, if they are to survive the silver tsunami.?
• The opposing megatrends of aging population and advanced biomedicine are forcing the reform of business models for insurance companies, pension funds, banks, and investment firms, and opening up new opportunities around AgeTech, WealthTech, InsurTech and the rise of novel financial derivatives tied to the global Longevity Industry.

The gap between life expectancy and health-adjusted life expectancy in 10 countries

GOVERNMENT POLICY & STRATEGY: A PRIORITIZED AREA OF FOCUS

Nations most likely to initiate Longevity reforms will be countries characterized as Longevity-progressive with strong scientific bases in biotechnology, that are likely to integrate AI into their economic, financial, and healthcare systems. Much of the responsibility for these initiatives lie with governments.

GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES AROUND THE WORLD

There's been a recent explosion of disconnected government initiatives around the world, each attempting to address the demographic challenge. Governments have been offering a myriad of ad hoc solutions.

Lifestyle and Fitness Programs such as:

• Japan’s plans for an Ageless Society
• Singapore's smart-homes, residential master plans
• The Seoul Metropolitan Government’s “2020 Master Plan for the Aged Society”
• Preventive medicine initiatives such as the UK’s genomic medicine service
• The Swiss Personalized Health Network initiative

Intervening in the biology of aging itself such as:

• The Netherlands’ Deltaplan for Dementia
• Switzerland’s Masterplan for the Promotion of Biomedical Research
• BIRAX Aging, the joint UK-Israeli Geroscience research initiative

Although no national level Longevity development strategy exists anywhere in the world, we see the beginnings of one in the UK’s existing initiatives, which lay a good foundation for the development of such a plan.

LONGEVITY POLICY, POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE

Progress in Longevity is no longer simply a question of progress in Geroscience or advanced biomedicine. Progress is driven by the synergetic convergence of intersection of multiple distinct technological sectors and sub-sectors. The political conditions surrounding the Longevity sector are some of the most important factors on which its future depends. Concerted efforts to synergize government-led Longevity development plans and related efforts is very important and may very well determine the shape, rate and trajectory of the industry’s development in the years to come.

What is government's role in moving Longevity forward?

• National initiatives: Government is responsible for driving forward the development of many facets of the Longevity industry including social care, financial reforms, and also in supporting technological synergies, such as the integration of big data and healthcare. In Switzerland, the heterogeneity of health data infrastructures has delayed the development of a nationwide personalized health ecosystem as compared to countries with more homogenous national health systems. A government strategy should be developed to rectify this. The Swiss government could also intensively develop Geroscience, precision medicine, and FinTech to a state so advanced that it propels Switzerland into a central role in the internationally competitive Longevity business ecosystem, where it can rise to become a global leader in the specific field of Longevity finance.
• International initiatives: It is necessary for Longevity-progressive nations to establish intergovernmental initiatives that would leverage key strengths of different nations in order to launch programs that yield synergistic, multiplicative effects, enabling the sharing of key technologies, resources and experts.
• The formation of a task force of experts to analyze and project the minimum estimated budget for the UK National Longevity Development Strategy in a realistic manner, considering that the practical threshold for the successful implementation of national Longevity industrial strategy in case of UK could not be less than ￡40 billion annually.?
• Prioritized emphasis on international cooperation with other Longevity-progressive countries in the development of the Blueprint for a National Healthy Aging Industrial Strategy,
• Seeking maximum synergy between the UK’s Longevity strategy on the one hand and its AI Industrial Strategy on the other, given the substantial accelerative effect that AI brings to advanced biomedicine and practical applications (P4 Medicine)
• The creation of a database of relevant partners and counter parties to be involved in the implementation of the strategy
• The establishment of multiple Longevity Startup Accelerators in London and other major regional industry-academic hubs.?
• The development of a task force and working group to structure and roadmap a UK Division for International Longevity Cooperation. This division would focus on the establishment of industrial and technological bridges between the UK and other Longevity-progressive regions such as Israel, Singapore, Switzerland and the USA, and would also focus on the establishment of intergovernmental initiatives that would leverage the key strengths of different nations in order to launch programs that yield synergistic, multiplicative effects, enabling the sharing of key technologies, resources and experts.

This initiative should also establish embassies with UK ambassadors present in different Longevity-progressive regions to liaison with local government officials, startups, researchers and R&D hubs.

Top government-led Longevity initiatives?ranked by strength and relevance.

The subsequent chapters serve as an overview of government initiatives from various countries which are contending with the silver tsunami in their own way, ranging from:

Young parliamentary democracies with limited histories of government programs such as Spain, which produce government initiatives for the elderly in abundance but show little concerted effort for bringing about comprehensive solutions for dealing with the demographic crisis, and instead produce a succession of short-term plans and ad hoc regulations in order to ameliorate the experience of their aging societies.

Technocratic tiger economies such as Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea. These countries tend to resemble what this report series has defined as Longevity-progressive countries: small technocratic countries with aging populations, who are therefore galvanized to produce coordinated solutions. We can observe in these countries a large overall quantity of aging and Longevity-related initiatives. However, the budgets of these initiatives are much smaller than those allocated by larger countries with greater GDP. Also, these countries have begun implementing their initiatives comparatively recently - from 12 years in Singapore to 20 years in Hong Kong.

Strong and established parliamentary democracies such as the UK and Japan. These are the states that have been facing the challenge of Longevity for some time already and already making an effort to manifest the dividend in Longevity and to overcome the demographic challenges posed by an aging population. Moreover, they have already demonstrated the political will for developing bold industrial strategies. This combination of factors puts them a cut above the tiger economies. The main challenge for these countries currently is continuing to assure consistent policy in this area, as well as continuing to innovate.

Government Initiatives Around the World

Represented here are the total number of relevant initiatives in the UK, the Netherlands, South Korea, Israel, Singapore, Switzerland, Japan, Hong Kong, Spain, the European Union, the USA and China.

Different governments have been offering a myriad of ad hoc solutions for adapting to the demographic crisis: Lifestyle and Fitness Programs such as Japan’s plans for an Ageless Society, whereby people aged 65 or older will not be automatically regarded as seniors but will be encouraged to stay healthy and work, remaining economically active. AgeTech programs, such as the Singapore Government’s initiatives focused on smart-homes to improve elderly quality of life and wellbeing, and increasing their digital literacy. Residential master plans, such as the Seoul metropolitan government’s “2020 Master Plan for the Aged Society” embracing the vision of Seoul as “a city whose citizens enjoy healthy and active lives of up to 100 years” under the banner of an “age-friendly city”.?

The global distribution of cities currently signed up to the WHO age-friendly cities guidelines.

We have seen initiatives for a preventive medicine approaches to aging, such as the UK’s genomic medicine service and Swiss Personalized Health Network.?We have seen initiatives for intervening even further upstream, in the biology of aging itself, with Geroscience initiatives such as the Netherlands’ Deltaplan for Dementia and Switzerland’s Masterplan for the Promotion of Biomedical Research, and BIRAX Aging, the joint UK-Israeli Geroscience research initiative.

We have even seen financial innovations such as the Swiss City of St Gallen’s elderly bank, where retired volunteers “deposit” hours worked looking after elderly people (and in return can use any time saved up for their own care provision later in life).

Overview of relevant Longevity projects and initiatives in 11 different regions globally, classified into National Master Plans, Industrial Strategies, and Municipal Government Programs.

HALE (Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy) is a measure of population health that takes into account mortality and morbidity. It adjusts overall life expectancy by the amount of time lived in less than perfect health, and is already viewed by policy makers as a key metric internationally.

A range of novel specialized financial institutions could ride this rising tide: AgeTech Banks, Longevity index fund and hedge funds, and even a Longevity stock exchanges for Longevity startups, that will issue specialized derivatives. It is by such means that increased global Longevity will be transformed from a threat into an opportunity, and conservative investors of the future can provide unlimited liquidity to the Longevity industry, thereby establishing a self-perpetuating cycle capable of transforming aging as a source of economic loss and stagnation into Healthy Longevity as a source of economic growth and stability.

For more information on the future of Longevity finance, refer to the preceding article, The Future of the Financial Longevity Industry.

Longevity in UK Cross-Sector Comparative Analysis: Special Case Study

Unfortunately, no nation-level Longevity development strategy exists anywhere in the world. But we can nonetheless see the rudiments of one in the UK’s existing initiatives, which lay a good foundation for the development of such a plan, having taken several crucial early steps.

Indeed, just this week the UK Government published the green paper of its Preventive Medicine National Strategy, entitled “Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s – consultation document”. In practice, this indicates that the UK will be the first country to officially implement P4 (Personalized, Preventive, Precision and Participatory) medicine into its national healthcare system.?

This is the newest development in a series of large steps that the UK government has made in recent years towards the development of a proactive, progressive and technology-driven national Healthy Longevity development strategy, beginning with the formation of the Aging Industrial Grand Challenge (prioritizing the problem of aging population as one of four key national industrial development challenges for the nation) in 2017, followed by the launch of the ￡98 million Government-led Healthy Aging Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund in 2018.

These are some of the major factors that led to the UK being ranked as #1 in Aging Analytics Agency’s National Longevity Development Plans: Global Overview (First Edition) analytical report, which used quantitative metrics to rank the strength, proactivity and relevance of various nations’ Longevity development projects and initiatives. This new green paper strengthens and reaffirms the conclusion made in that analytical report, on the UK’s leading position as a country that prioritizes the issue of aging population and the opportunity of Healthy Longevity as key national priority items of the nation’s government.?

There are a number of countries (including Singapore, Switzerland, South Korea, Israel, the Netherlands, Spain and Japan) that are currently ahead of the UK in terms of the gap between life expectancy and Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy (HALE), which can be considered one of the most robust measures of Healthy Longevity. However, this fact may be due to the comparatively smaller size of these countries populations, among other factors, which makes the implementation of national policy and preventive healthcare initiatives easier to implement.

However, one of the foremost reasons that the UK’s was ranked as #1 in Aging Analytics Agency’s “National Longevity Development Plans” analytical report, despite the country’s comparative large gap between life expectancy and Healthy Longevity, was because the nation is making boldly progressive, science and technology-driven steps to launch initiatives that can rapidly decrease this gap, and not just putting forth optimistic rhetoric, but actually following-through on its promises with concrete and tangible actions.

Given the UK’s large GDP, the proactive efforts of its government to make Healthy Longevity a major priority of its national agenda, and the many steps they have taken to prove their seriousness on this topic, it is quite likely that the UK can become the clear leader in terms of government-ed National Longevity development plans, and can achieve very practical and tangible results in increasing their National Healthy Longevity within the next 5 years.

Early steps taken by the UK government include.

• The UK has recognized an "aging society" as one of its 4 core industrial grand challenges, and allocated ￡300 million to overcome this challenge, out of which goes ￡98 towards "Healthy Aging Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund."
• This ￡98 million will drive the development of new products and services which will help people to live in their homes for longer, tackle loneliness, and increase independence and wellbeing.
• The UK has allocated ￡210 million towards "Data to early diagnosis and precision medicine program"
• The Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science (CEGS) program, which aims to develop novel and innovative genomic research projects using the data sets and technologies developed by the Human Genome Project.
• Innovate UK’s Digitalization of Medicines Manufacturing Challenge Fund.
• In June 2018 Theresa May announced a commitment to harness AI to provide five more years of healthy independent lives by 2035.?

Reviewing these initiatives, we can see that the UK has already turned its attention to cross-sector collaboration, particularly between artificial intelligence and healthcare. There has also been a general recognition of the central role of technology, and financial technology in particular, in improving the lives of the elderly.?

However, there is no explicit intention of directing these agendas toward improving Healthy Longevity as a metric in itself yet. If the UK Government wants to optimize its existing initiatives for solving the aging population problem, it must create a veritable Industry of Healthy Longevity itself, which in turn requires:?

• A greater focus on promoting biomedical innovations focused on extending Healthy Longevity, and on financial reform to neutralize economic risks posed by an aging society.?
• A greater focus on combining these technologies in order to meet strategic goals. For example, it is not clear how much the UK government knows about the impact of its own biomedical initiatives on the ‘aging society’ grand challenge.

Existing efforts must be extended to create a framework for changing the deficit model of the ‘Aging Society’ to an asset model around ‘Longevity’. And to be bold with a national strategy to harness the ‘Longevity Dividend’ to benefit all people in the society. In other words, we need a fully integrated Longevity National Development Plan. This requires intelligent coordination.

The Future of Longevity Governance - Forecasts

A wide range of independent Longevity-related government initiatives have recently been appearing around the world. This includes social and educational programs, urban planning solutions, biotechnological investment, programs, and national health data infrastructures.

1. In the next few years, several technologically advanced, smart, small states will emerge as global competitors in the development of integrated Longevity Industry ecosystems.
2. Some will focus on specific sectors tuned to their unique strengths, while others will seek to create fully integrated hubs encompassing the entire multifaceted scope of the Longevity Industry.
3. Some will be sovereign states, some will be independent regions of a bigger countries.
4. Some will be smart city-states such as Singapore, some of the Swiss cantons.
5. We anticipate that some city-hubs will focus primarily on R&D, as is the case in Basel, Switzerland, while others will be focused on practical applications such as P4 medicine as is the case in Lausanne, Switzerland.
6. The potential of government to bring about this type of development is not to be underestimated. The previously underdeveloped Zug canton in Switzerland for example - through a set of legislative initiatives, and some government coordination, as well as initiatives within the "crypto community" - quickly became known worldwide as the 'Crypto Valley'. All that was required was for the cantonal authorities to foster a legislative environment (combined with some international promotional efforts) that would incentivize relevant expertise to relocate there and set up business. The government created conditions which attracted a self-selecting population of community of crypto entrepreneurs. During the early years, cryptocurrencies were vulnerable to fraud, which weakened the crypto economy. But blockchain technology suffered no such setback, so Switzerland, by making itself a blockchain capital of the world, plugged that entire gap in the market, and henceforth is likely to remain at the centre of the new wave of safe cryptoeconomy.
7. We are observing an explosion of similar initiatives in a number of Longevity-progressive countries. These countries are focusing on various facets of the Longevity industry, so we expect to see the formation of Longevity industrial clusters. As in Zug, governments may facilitate the growth of industrial clusters, through the formation of innovative ecosystems and legislative and industrial infrastructures, such as the establishment of flexible progressive legal frameworks for clinical trials, government support for more rapidly implementing practical applications in the clinic to promote the practical application of AI for diagnostic, preventive medicine, precision treatments, and other advanced technologies, the establishment of financial institutions and instruments based upon the Longevity industry’s participants, products and services
8. Some countries are now selling their citizenship to foreign expats present and working in those countries for a certain period, thereby utilizing the same technique of selectively attracting human expertise that was used by Singapore in the creation of its technological mega-hub.?
9. We expect five years from now to see a “new normal” of small technocratic nations selling their citizenship selectively to people committed to advancing Longevity-related technologies, in exchange for access to some of the most sophisticated and advanced healthcare, life insurance, MedTech, AgeTech and WealthTech ecosystems available.?
10. One smaller-scale analogue of this type of development can be seen in the establishment of smaller “smart cities” by big corporations such as Apple, Facebook and Google, built to accommodate the specific needs and desired of their entire scope of employees, many of whom have migrated to work.?
11. The ideal “Longevity-progressive country” would be able to undertake similar projects: smart towns and cities that integrate all sub-sectors of the multifaceted Longevity industry to create an optimized ecosystem for the maintenance of health and wealth. The development of these Longevity megahubs would incentivize the elderly to relocate in exchange for access to the best forms of AgeTech, WealthTech and other technologies, products, services and social policies capable of enabling the highest possible quality of life, social activity, mental wellness and overall functionality. Meanwhile, the middle-aged would be incentivized to relocate in exchange for access to the highest-quality MedTech, HealthTech and P4 medicine services, and the most sophisticated life and health insurance systems that reward their clients for the maintenance of an optimal state of health.

The most proactive and progressive scientists, industry players, companies, investors and stakeholders should consider being present in those countries poised to become Longevity MegaHubs already now, in advance, in order to be ahead of the curve. Those readers interested to find out what those countries are, should keep an eye on the upcoming second edition of Aging Analytics Agency’s “National Longevity Development Plans Global Overview, Extended Edition II”.

Our Next Longevity Article

My two previous articles and this one raised a great deal of interest. Some people commented that my projections were too bold, while others argued that I were too conservative! Some leading scientists who work in the field of Geroscience contacted me and said they were quite disappointed because, in their view, my projections were too conservative and our article seemed overly skeptical about current progress in aging research. People disagree on prospective timelines for seriously intervening in aging and achieving appreciable extension of Healthy Longevity by scientific and technological means.?This article provides a deep dive into the current state of Longevity Science, with an emphasis on practical applications.

In my next article I will

1) Provide an overview of the current state of actual scientific progress in aging research.

2) Explain why 90% of financiers, including venture investors, are underestimating the current rate of progress.

3) Explain why scientists working in the field of Geroscience are overestimating the current rate of progress.

4) Explain how we address these disproportions and help adjust the skepticism of investors and the optimism of scientists using AI to produce tangible, quantifiable metrics that enable assessment, analysis, and forecasting in a realistic and practical manner.

This article was written by?Margaretta Colangelo.?Margaretta is Co-founder and CEO of?Jthereum an enterprise Blockchain technology company. She is associate editor at AI Time Journal and serves on the advisory board of the AI Precision Health Institute at the University of Hawai?i?Cancer Center. She is based in San Francisco.?@realmargaretta