Speaking at the NY Founders Forum: Precision Medicine, Longevity Science, and AI

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Last week I was invited to speak at the NY Founders Forum, a couple of hundred successful founders and funders, most from the tech world. There was a strong interest in healthy longevity, as individuals and as a group.

I joined a panel with Michael Greve, a German entrepreneur who has started several companies in this space, tackling different mechanisms of aging. I hope to interview him for a future newsletter – you will find his approach very novel. Also Celine Halioua of Loyal, focused on preventing aging in dogs (and of course discovering things of relevance to Homo sapiens), and Kristen Fortney, founder of BioAge, one of the most promising human anti-aging drug discovery companies. Lara Lewington of the BBC kept us on our toes – she’s clearly also very much into healthspan technology herself.

At the meeting was also Ollie Zolman, a medic advising Bryan Johnson and able to assess the age of all 82 (!) of your organs. I don’t advise counting them now. And Lara had recently interviewed Bryan and found him very engaging on his own quest (which you can read about at Bryanjohnson.com).

I spoke about how I see precision medicine, longevity science and AI coming together to make personalised healthspan improvement (“precision prevention”, if you like) a reality. I was asked: “can we do it now?” and replied that we have most of the tools but this is a journey for the next 5 years. One that will be much more likely to succeed if the field converges, in terms of protocols, and collects treatment and outcome data as consistently as possible.

One question that came up – and usually does with a thoughtful group – is how healthspan technology can reach into the general population. Like the other panel members, I believe that we can make a start with the kind of people that can afford a battery of expensive tests and ground-breaking treatments and this will progressively filter through to the rest of us. Most technology does this, and it is accelerated when technology, like drugs, goes off patent or becomes available from less costly sources, for example in Asia.

One of the very interesting ways to use AI to provide better client service at lower cost was demoed at the Forum: Hippocratic.ai. This cunningly designed, and specially trained chatbot can follow up from doctor-led procedures and consultations as if it were a highly experienced nurse, able to converse with the patient about side effects, future appointments and so on. I’m sure this is a glimpse of the future, as most of the health systems of the world are straining to have enough qualified professionals and balance their books.

I said at the meeting that I see healthspan advance as both an individual challenge and a team sport – one where we need to learn from everyone’s experience. I floated the idea of a “coopetition community” whose members undertake their individual healthy longevity journeys, and compete on the basis of their progress. The learnings will be valuable for both other members of the community and also the wider field and population. I found a lot of resonance on this idea and will be pushing ahead with it. The Forum would be a great place to start! I welcome your reactions to this concept.