??? Unlocking the Path to a Healthy Old Life

Last week, The Economist captivated us with the prospect of Living to 120 thanks to 21st Century life science extending human longevity.

Over the past century, scientific progress has significantly increased life expectancy, however, the healthspan-lifespan gap is surprisingly wide with people now spending more years in poor health than at any time in history.

While lifespan extension grabs the headlines, it's more vital than ever to build on breakthrough, inter-disciplinary research that reframes life course and healthy longevity and collectively deploy this know-how with enabling technology and business model innovation to meaningfully reduce this healthspan-lifespan gap.

In this quest, visionary leaders such as Peter Attia , Andrew J Scott , and institutions like the McKinsey Health Institute , Stanford Center on Longevity , US National Academy of Medicine , and UK National Innovation Centre for Ageing are seeking to reshape the future by advocating for proactive prevention, an alternative ageing narrative, intergenerational dividends and ecosystem collaboration, while purpose-driven entrepreneurs rise to the challenge, to help steer humanity toward a future of vitality, resilience, and flourishing across all dimensions of health.

As highlighted below, humanity is at a very promising horizon to harness this latent opportunity to add billions of years of better quality life, improve social cohesion and increase economic productivity.

Track 1: Own the Healthspan-Lifespan Gap

My early inspiration was Peter Attia (above) when he presented pathways to square the healthspan curve, now shared in his best selling book, Outlive . Attia's objective of reducing suffering and alleviating what's becoming an unsustainable financial burden starts by challenging the historic patriarchal and interventionist medical model with an approach driven by prevention and personal agency to steward our own health, wellness and resilience into old age:

...Continuing to ignore healthspan, as we’ve been doing, not only condemns people to a sick and miserable older age but is guaranteed to bankrupt us eventually.

...longevity as a concept is really only meaningful to the extent that we are defying or avoiding all these vectors of decline... cognitive, physical, and even emotional deterioration can all be slowed and even reversed in some cases with the application of the proper tactics.

...Medicine 3.0 demands much more from you, the patient: You must be well informed, medically literate to a reasonable degree, clear-eyed about your goals, and cognizant of the true nature of risk.

T2: Embrace an Aspirational Ageing Narrative

LBS Professor of Economics, demography guru and longevity KOL, Andrew J Scott , is equally inspiring with a thoughtfully optimistic perspective on rethinking healthy ageing by explaining its benefits for individuals and society at large:

…if you look at (ageing) from that longevity point of view, not in terms of time passed, but in terms of time to go, and the malleability of age, we can make the most of these longer lives and seize an advantage, but we have to focus on changing how we age.

…You’ve got to try and think, what would I like in the future? You’re going to want to be healthy. You want to have some money. You want to be in a good relationship. And you want to have options about other things to do.

…achieving healthy longevity (is) a key individual, social, and policy priority. Aside from the potential benefits to individuals.., if longer lives are also healthier then employment at older ages can rise, thus boosting GDP… Similarly, improvements in health at older ages can reduce the costs associated with age-related diseases and care… Combined, these effects point to the multi-billion-dollar benefits of achieving healthy longevity.

T3: Understand Health across all Dimensions

The McKinsey Health Institute (MHI) in Adding Years to Life and Life to Years underscores the foundational need to take a modern, whole-of-life and integrated perspective of healthy ageing across its physical, mental, social, and spiritual dimensions and the numerous influencing factors beyond genetic traits.

These include an individual’s behaviour and lifestyle (nutrition, activities, sleep), their access to resources (education, training, care giving, health, pharmaceuticals) and their environment (housing, technology, cyber safety, transportation) all underpinned by their financial situation.

MHI says six material shifts in societal mindsets and actions are needed to reach the full potential for human health:

• Investing disproportionately more on prevention and promoting optimal health…
• Improving measurement and data collection
• Scaling what already works
• Innovating more and quickly, focusing on the intersection of digital, technology, and services
• Unleashing the full potential of all industries given the fundamental relevance of health to every business
• Empowering individuals to steward their own health

T4: Embark on a Life Course Approach

Healthy longevity requires both behaviour changes across the life course as well as major shifts across education, work, relationships and community. The Stanford Center on Longevity says that we are not ready for the new normal 100 year life.

However, in The New Map of Life it envisions a future in which everyone can make the most of the 100-year life opportunity by following its guiding principles which include the economic value of acting early and investing strategically to meet the challenges and make the most of the longevity:

• Celebrate age diversity as a net positive for societies - and the bottom line
• Align health spans to life spans
• Build financial security from the start
• Invest in future centenarians to deliver big returns
• Create longevity-ready communities
• Harness technological breakthroughs to transform the future of aging
• Distribute advances equitably, across the entire population
• Embrace life transitions as growth opportunities, not disruptions.
• Learn throughout life
• Work more years, with more flexibility

T5: Drive Intergenerational Longevity Dividends

The US National Academy of Medicine formed an international commission of experts from multiple domains to develop its evidence-based roadmap to advance healthy longevity around the globe. The commission's 2022 Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity foresees a virtuous cycle (above) that drives greater equity and social cohesion.

...With an all-of-society effort to improve healthy longevity, based on the evidence, the commission concluded that the future of aging societies could be optimistic, with older people contributing to family, community, and society and living lives with meaning and purpose. Societies could thrive with a strong social compact, intergenerational cohesion, and strong economies with plentiful work and volunteer roles for people of all ages.

The commission's evidence for this vision includes:

• Healthspan can equal lifespan
• All generations benefit when barriers to older people’s full participation are eliminated
• There is proven return on investment (ROI) for: - Investments in social and physical infrastructure - Improving health at all ages - Enabling older people to work and volunteer in ways they value
• Workforce participation among older people is positively correlated with workforce participation among younger people; intergenerational teams (are) more productive and innovative

T6: Effect Quantum Systemic Change

The UK National Innovation Centre for Ageing and Collider Health launched Quantum Healthy Longevity for Healthy People, Planet, and Growth presenting a bold and enlightened blueprint for change:

...Health-care systems based only on response to illness are no longer affordable, and economies need a more productive workforce. The current model, which focuses on reactive sick-care alone, must be shifted to a new one based on proactive prevention, with the ever-growing recognition that the wealth of nations is not possible without the health of populations.

...We need to radically reimagine short-term, medium-term, and long-term responses at a global, societal, and individual level and significantly invest in an interdependent ecosystem for science and innovation to accelerate healthy longevity at quantum scale and pace.

...Take an Exposome approach (capturing) the complex exposures humans face that cumulatively affect lifelong health... (and) create a bank of biomarker data and an atlas of geroprotective interventions based on larger and more diverse datasets than hitherto possible..

...It is now time to be bold and accelerate the urgent system changes needed to achieve healthy people, planet, and growth.

MHI also makes a similar case for greater ecosystem collaboration:

...Dramatically improving our health requires an ecosystem approach - exchanging ideas, aligning around standards, working across multiple stakeholder silos. It will require unprecedented collaboration to shift society’s mindsets and actions enough to realize possible gains in life expectancy and quality of life.

T7: Back Purpose-led Tech Founders

In recent decades, entrepreneurs have played a demonstrable role in the creative disruption and transformation of industry after industry. A broad recognition of the massive opportunity to improve the quality of life for older adults, is attracting an inspirational generation of purpose-led tech entrepreneurs believing the way to do well is to do good.

These high-impact entrepreneurs will be essential to bring the needed creativity, accelerate innovation and deliver customer solutions at affordable scale. Many of these mission-driven startups have additional inherent advantages to help them succeed in this new environment, notably talent access and retention.

The growing number of pioneering players providing focused support, capital and other acceleration resources to this sector include the AgeTech Collaborative? from AARP , Techstars Future of Longevity Accelerator , a2 Collective | a2PilotAwards.ai , NIA’s Research and Entrepreneurial Development Immersion ?(REDI) program, Primetime Partners , Third Act Ventures , Ziegler Link?age Funds , Cake Ventures , 1843 Capital , CEOc 's Aging Innovation Fund, Centre for Aging + Brain Health Innovation , Ontario Brain Institute , envisAGE , Birdhouse Ventures , Longevity Venture Partners ...

Vivre, c'est vieillir, rien de plus. Simone de Beauvoir