PROMOTING UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE
WHICH THE U$A DOES NOT HAVE
Longevity is gaining momentum and it’s time for healthcare to catch up
Author: Eleanor Garth |February 2, 2024
LongeVC’s Sergey Jakimov discusses how longevity’s ideas are taking root in society – but there is still work to be done to bring healthcare up to speed.
Sergey Jakimov is a founding partner of LongeVC, a venture capital company that supports early-stage biotech and longevity-focused founders and startups. While he is obviously an entrepreneur, he always has an eye on the ethical implications of biotech and longevity-focused initiatives.
While he firmly believes in human uniqueness, individuality and purpose, today’s article views us as functional units within society – this perspective is intentional, aiming to explore broader societal implications.
LongeVC’s Sergey Jakimov discusses how longevity’s ideas are taking root in society – but there is still work to be done to bring healthcare up to speed.
Sergey Jakimov is a founding partner of LongeVC, a venture capital company that supports early-stage biotech and longevity-focused founders and startups. While he is obviously an entrepreneur, he always has an eye on the ethical implications of biotech and longevity-focused initiatives.
While he firmly believes in human uniqueness, individuality and purpose, today’s article views us as functional units within society – this perspective is intentional, aiming to explore broader societal implications.
Longevity: from a billionaire’s turf to a universal healthcare, part 1
by Sergey Jakimov
I wanted to start this pieceon a positive note, which is that the overall understanding of what it takes to live a longer life of better quality is slowly making its way into the awareness of average members of our global society.
The portrait of that “average” person may differ, but for simplicity, we can generally describe them as someone with no professional experience or education in the healthcare industry; they consume mainstream media and generally know what is and is not good for them.
This is a generalistic and oversimplified view, but I think you’ll realize, as I did, that this basic understanding that most people have of their health is, surprisingly, the answer to a more complex set of issues in longevity.
How does this basic understanding of a good or bad lifestyle manifest in our life choices? Through straightforward, and at times unpleasant, inclinations and prolonged calculated patterns of behavior – systematically going for a walk instead of staying on the couch, choosing vegetables over fast food, etc. Some of these choices also became easier to make – different wearables and apps make lifestyle choices more manageable, motivating us to move fast, sleep, and care for ourselves, for example. In fact, some of us are much bigger longevity enthusiasts than we thought – we just call it by a different name. Wellness. Health. Good habits.
Regardless of the term, this is a good start for the broader adoption of the term longevity. This pattern of making a series of “healthy” lifestyle choices is vital. It’s a good start because it is a basic (read: easily understandable) longevity narrative. And it is happening “now” – indeed, it is already rooted in the lives of an increasing number of members of our society. It is, thus, an excellent and promising pattern for our overall adoption of longevity.
Longevity is non-existent in the mainstream healthcare system
However, looking further away from the world of trackers, counting steps, and consuming broccoli, it appears that longevity isn’t taking root yet in the healthcare system. Finding longevity-centred narratives, frameworks, methodologies, or approaches is hard. Most practicing physicians are unaware of the term, and general hospitals lack structured longevity programs.
Sergey Jakimov is a founding partner of LongeVC
We need to manage our expectations of the average healthcare system, and first, we must understand its purpose. Healthcare systems and, most importantly, their patient-facing care parts are heavily standardised, protocoled, high-throughput triaging machines geared towards one goal only: being able to efficiently process large populations with various conditions, efficiently filtering the patients, and assigning them, with little to no level of personalisation, to the most fitting treatment regimen. In all their pragmatic nature, one might even claim that they are not there to save every patient but rather to demonstrate a reasonable success rate in recovering a significant portion of them.
Frankly, this feature is one of the primary reasons why any increasingly personalised healthcare debate always fails within the framework of the traditional high-throughput healthcare system. There is insufficient time, resources, and willingness to treat everyone differently. It was also never a goal to begin with.
The way a traditional healthcare framework approaches a patient’s health condition is also fundamentally different from the longevity narrative. It is hugely reactive instead of proactive (e.g., focused on prevention). For the process-oriented and protocol-driven triage system to attend to the patient, one must be substantially ill or, at the very least, reasonably suspect that they are sick. Otherwise, why bother with a healthy individual?
It is true that state screening programs for breast, colon, ovarian, and other cancers partially disprove this claim; they also reduce the disease burden in certain illnesses that, if discovered late, will render a person obsolete and unrecoverable.
As a result, the picture seems grim. We are units in society, and unit economics is against us. We need efficient care, which means reducing personalisation and treating diseases rather than preventing them.
We need to manage our expectations of the average healthcare system, and first, we must understand its purpose. Healthcare systems and, most importantly, their patient-facing care parts are heavily standardised, protocoled, high-throughput triaging machines geared towards one goal only: being able to efficiently process large populations with various conditions, efficiently filtering the patients, and assigning them, with little to no level of personalisation, to the most fitting treatment regimen. In all their pragmatic nature, one might even claim that they are not there to save every patient but rather to demonstrate a reasonable success rate in recovering a significant portion of them.
Frankly, this feature is one of the primary reasons why any increasingly personalised healthcare debate always fails within the framework of the traditional high-throughput healthcare system. There is insufficient time, resources, and willingness to treat everyone differently. It was also never a goal to begin with.
The way a traditional healthcare framework approaches a patient’s health condition is also fundamentally different from the longevity narrative. It is hugely reactive instead of proactive (e.g., focused on prevention). For the process-oriented and protocol-driven triage system to attend to the patient, one must be substantially ill or, at the very least, reasonably suspect that they are sick. Otherwise, why bother with a healthy individual?
It is true that state screening programs for breast, colon, ovarian, and other cancers partially disprove this claim; they also reduce the disease burden in certain illnesses that, if discovered late, will render a person obsolete and unrecoverable.
As a result, the picture seems grim. We are units in society, and unit economics is against us. We need efficient care, which means reducing personalisation and treating diseases rather than preventing them.
Time for change
While longevity gains momentum among individuals through healthier lifestyle choices and technological aids, its presence in the healthcare system remains minimal. The current healthcare paradigm, which is heavily focused on reactive treatment rather than proactive prevention, is misaligned with the principles of longevity. This disconnect presents a critical challenge: how do we bridge the gap between individual health initiatives and a healthcare system yet to embrace the longevity narrative fully?
We realise that transformative changes are needed to integrate longevity into healthcare frameworks. In Part 2, we will explore the barriers and potential strategies to overcome them, furthering our journey towards a healthcare system that fully embraces and integrates the principles of longevity.
How longevity will arrive for everyone
Author: Eleanor Garth | Published on: February 2, 2024 |
LongeVC’s Sergey Jakimov says longevity needs to demystify, be understandable and be ready to use in healthcare.
LongeVC is a Switzerland-based venture capital company that supports early-stage biotech and longevity-focused founders and startups. Its founding partner, entrepreneur Sergey Jakimov, takes his responsibility to the sector seriously, and while he is keen to help shape the future of longevity biotech, he is equally focused on keeping a weather eye on the ethical implications of biotech and longevity-focused initiatives.
While Jakimov firmly believes in human uniqueness, individuality and purpose, today’s article views us as functional units within society – this perspective is intentional, aiming to explore broader societal implications.
Exploring the integration of longevity into healthcare systems reveals significant obstacles. Despite its promise and growing recognition in personal health practices, longevity encounters a complex terrain in mainstream healthcare’s structured, protocol-driven environment. Key challenges include high costs, limited awareness, and a lack of specific longevity treatments and physician training. This discussion centres on these issues, probing why healthcare systems have yet to fully adopt longevity and identifying steps towards a more proactive, health-oriented approach.
Putting the “sleep more, move more” level of essential self-care aside, real longevity medicine is currently not accessible to an average member of society despite its proven results. There are several reasons why.
First, high costs. As we speak, longevity care is a realm of high-end specialised boutique clinics that provide expensive care (think hundreds of thousands of US dollars), and they target high-net-worth patients who can afford it.
Second, there is low longevity literacy in patients – even in understanding the term “longevity.” Even if the care were made universally available, it might not even be used. Patients of all ages need to be educated on why medical care is pivoting towards health optimisation, not just disease treatment. And we need to start now, as the “do not fix what’s not broken” principle is tough to crack.
Third, there is the relative absence of proven longevity-purpose-designed drugs and regimens. This still, in some eyes, renders the discipline incomplete and not feasible for larger populations.
Fourth, there is a lack of physician training. While most doctors do not know what longevity means, becoming a longevity physician takes dedication. Fortunately, the Healthy Longevity Medicine Society (HLMS) is standardising and enabling systemic longevity physician education.
Sergey Jakimov is a founding partner of LongeVC
Lastly, readiness. Some societies are not simply ready for longevity. Though difficult to admit, universal longevity care in Norway, where social security, pensions, and well-being are at their highest, would have huge economic and moral consequences. Then, repeat it in Latvia, Romania, or Bulgaria, where the pensions mostly do not exceed a few hundred euros. The former seems viable; the latter seems like an evil joke.
How do we standardise and scale longevity?
Let us step back and think about how new innovations are adopted. Many of us have seen the “innovation adoption graph,” with early adopters leading and laggards catching up, but it does not explain how innovations get there. How do these new technologies stop being “new” and become part of the everyday? Through standardisation.
Standardisation is the way we live and use things. We’ve standardised safety – enter the ISO standard; we’ve standardised medical procedures and drug manufacturing – enter LASIK, surgical methodologies, GMP practises, etc. Another familiar example is how degrees, diplomas, and ECTS points standardise education. We have standardised food and welcomed quality control franchises. Standardisation of personalisation makes it accessible. If longevity care relies on our uniqueness, then uniqueness too needs to become a standard, repeatable norm.
Science, data, and efficacy are not enough to spread longevity medicine. Nor is the focus on treating only high-net-worth individuals. Standardisation and a focus on accessibility, on the other hand, should be.
There has been no attempt to imagine longevity as a turnkey solution or an end-to-end healthcare framework integrated into existing healthcare systems and usable within the same, or slightly adjusted, patient care culture.
Treatment innovations gain widespread adoption only when incorporated into Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and universal protocols. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (PD1, PDL1) and monoclonal antibody strategies exemplify this. Initially cutting-edge, these drugs have been integrated into standard cancer protocols, such as those for melanoma, and recognised for their efficacy as primary or adjuvant therapies. Thus, they transitioned from exclusive treatments for a few to accessible options for many.
Of course, introducing longevity into the traditional healthcare systems as an almost parallel continuum of care is much more complicated. After all, while the healthcare system reacts to a sick individual, longevity starts way earlier, with a clear, proactive stance. It does not, however, mean that the two cannot co-exist.
Integrating longevity into traditional healthcare will be multifaceted. Firstly, standardising longevity care protocols and frameworks is essential. Institutions like HLMS must lead in establishing these benchmarks. Secondly, medical education must expand to include longevity training and enhance physicians’ existing knowledge with proactive, preventive healthcare approaches.
This necessitates a network of institutions committed to such education. Finally, the economic benefits of longevity care must be demonstrated. By preventing diseases and promoting sustained, cost-effective care, longevity can reduce expenses for insurance providers, lessen state burdens for healthcare costs, and sustain a healthier, more economically active population. This approach benefits public healthcare and creates new financial opportunities in the private sector.
The reality of longevity adoption
In essence, longevity must shed its image as an unattainable sci-fi luxury and demonstrate its practicality within existing healthcare systems. It should complement, not disrupt, these systems, easing economic and health burdens. As a distinct discipline, it needs evident, standardised expertise, protocols, and frameworks. This demystification will facilitate its broader adoption and integration.
It is like astrophysicists constantly debunking myths about black holes and outer space and making complicated science digestible for the public. It is the job of current longevity advocates (eg., our job, including physicians, VCs, academia, non-profits, and others) to work on wrapping longevity into something integrable, understandable, and ready-to-use in our healthcare systems.
Lastly, readiness. Some societies are not simply ready for longevity. Though difficult to admit, universal longevity care in Norway, where social security, pensions, and well-being are at their highest, would have huge economic and moral consequences. Then, repeat it in Latvia, Romania, or Bulgaria, where the pensions mostly do not exceed a few hundred euros. The former seems viable; the latter seems like an evil joke.
How do we standardise and scale longevity?
Let us step back and think about how new innovations are adopted. Many of us have seen the “innovation adoption graph,” with early adopters leading and laggards catching up, but it does not explain how innovations get there. How do these new technologies stop being “new” and become part of the everyday? Through standardisation.
Standardisation is the way we live and use things. We’ve standardised safety – enter the ISO standard; we’ve standardised medical procedures and drug manufacturing – enter LASIK, surgical methodologies, GMP practises, etc. Another familiar example is how degrees, diplomas, and ECTS points standardise education. We have standardised food and welcomed quality control franchises. Standardisation of personalisation makes it accessible. If longevity care relies on our uniqueness, then uniqueness too needs to become a standard, repeatable norm.
Science, data, and efficacy are not enough to spread longevity medicine. Nor is the focus on treating only high-net-worth individuals. Standardisation and a focus on accessibility, on the other hand, should be.
There has been no attempt to imagine longevity as a turnkey solution or an end-to-end healthcare framework integrated into existing healthcare systems and usable within the same, or slightly adjusted, patient care culture.
Treatment innovations gain widespread adoption only when incorporated into Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and universal protocols. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (PD1, PDL1) and monoclonal antibody strategies exemplify this. Initially cutting-edge, these drugs have been integrated into standard cancer protocols, such as those for melanoma, and recognised for their efficacy as primary or adjuvant therapies. Thus, they transitioned from exclusive treatments for a few to accessible options for many.
Of course, introducing longevity into the traditional healthcare systems as an almost parallel continuum of care is much more complicated. After all, while the healthcare system reacts to a sick individual, longevity starts way earlier, with a clear, proactive stance. It does not, however, mean that the two cannot co-exist.
Integrating longevity into traditional healthcare will be multifaceted. Firstly, standardising longevity care protocols and frameworks is essential. Institutions like HLMS must lead in establishing these benchmarks. Secondly, medical education must expand to include longevity training and enhance physicians’ existing knowledge with proactive, preventive healthcare approaches.
This necessitates a network of institutions committed to such education. Finally, the economic benefits of longevity care must be demonstrated. By preventing diseases and promoting sustained, cost-effective care, longevity can reduce expenses for insurance providers, lessen state burdens for healthcare costs, and sustain a healthier, more economically active population. This approach benefits public healthcare and creates new financial opportunities in the private sector.
The reality of longevity adoption
In essence, longevity must shed its image as an unattainable sci-fi luxury and demonstrate its practicality within existing healthcare systems. It should complement, not disrupt, these systems, easing economic and health burdens. As a distinct discipline, it needs evident, standardised expertise, protocols, and frameworks. This demystification will facilitate its broader adoption and integration.
It is like astrophysicists constantly debunking myths about black holes and outer space and making complicated science digestible for the public. It is the job of current longevity advocates (eg., our job, including physicians, VCs, academia, non-profits, and others) to work on wrapping longevity into something integrable, understandable, and ready-to-use in our healthcare systems.
Longevity: ‘money-spinning cult’ or the future of health?
Author: Danny Sullivan | Published on: April 20, 2023 | Last updated: May 2, 2023
BBC presenter discovers that the longevity industry isn’t just about billionaires trying to cheat death.
This weekend, the BBC will air a special 30-minute technology feature that turns the spotlight on the world of longevity. The Forever Young? episode follows presenter Lara Lewington as she travels to California to meet the tech entrepreneurs and scientists attempting to slow, stop and reverse the aging process. Her journey covers many aspects of longevity – from discovering the concept of healthspan and how to improve it, meeting a tech entrepreneur spending $2m a year to reduce his biological age, and even longevity for dogs.
Longevity.Technology: While those already embedded in the field don’t need to be convinced about the value of targeting aging, most people remain blissfully unaware of the exciting work going on in longevity. But times are a-changin’. With mainstream global news channels like the BBC highlighting developments in the sector, more and more people are beginning to take an interest in the science of longevity. It’s always interesting to hear an outsider’s perspective on the field, so we caught up with Lewington to see what she made of her induction into the science – and business – of aging
.
Lara Lewington is a technology presenter for the BBC.
Lewington’s interest in longevity was first piqued by news stories that made the longevity field sound like it was purely a whim of US billionaires seeking the fountain of youth.
“I didn’t know whether I was going into the heart of some sort of money-spinning cult, or whether it was actually people who really cared about scientific development and wanted to lead their best lives,” she says. “Once I started looking into it, I realised it wasn’t anywhere near as sensational as some tech billionaires wanting to live forever. I learned that there was a whole industry out there.”
Longevity sector ‘more realistic’ than expected
The longevity ‘industry’ that Lewington describes is largely divided into two main areas.
“You’ve got the whole biotech side where it’s about a potential new frontier of medicine,” she says. “If they can pull that off and create something that works at a cellular level to stop or reverse aging, then, in terms of medical development, that’s enormous. But then there’s this whole other lifestyle side, where you have got some things that seem to be proven to work, and some other things people are doing that don’t seem proven yet.”
Lewington’s interest in longevity was first piqued by news stories that made the longevity field sound like it was purely a whim of US billionaires seeking the fountain of youth.
“I didn’t know whether I was going into the heart of some sort of money-spinning cult, or whether it was actually people who really cared about scientific development and wanted to lead their best lives,” she says. “Once I started looking into it, I realised it wasn’t anywhere near as sensational as some tech billionaires wanting to live forever. I learned that there was a whole industry out there.”
Longevity sector ‘more realistic’ than expected
The longevity ‘industry’ that Lewington describes is largely divided into two main areas.
“You’ve got the whole biotech side where it’s about a potential new frontier of medicine,” she says. “If they can pull that off and create something that works at a cellular level to stop or reverse aging, then, in terms of medical development, that’s enormous. But then there’s this whole other lifestyle side, where you have got some things that seem to be proven to work, and some other things people are doing that don’t seem proven yet.”
Lewington underwent several longevity tests.
In addition to visiting biotech companies like UNITY Biotechnology and dog longevity company Loyal, Lewington also spoke with leading scientists in the field, including Dr Eric Verdin at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. The overwhelming feeling she gained from those conversation was that people working in the field are much more pragmatic than she thought they would be.
“It felt like everyone I spoke to was very realistic,” says Lewington. “A lot of things have worked in mice that then haven’t worked in humans, and everyone I talked to was very open and honest about that. Probably more so than I expected. Even people running smaller longevity biotechs seemed very measured, and it really felt like they were all in it together.”
Lifestyle is where it’s at… for now
The program also gets a clinical perspective from Dr Jordan Shlain, a practicing primary care doctor in San Francisco.
“Dr Shlain said he had lots of patients coming to him asking for longevity advice,” says Lewington. “And he said you first need to find out what they mean by longevity – what do they want to achieve? He also said it’s about lifestyle changes – not just a magic pill that will fix everything.”
“In fact, that seemed to be the conclusion from almost everybody: It will be great if we can create the drugs that do what they’re meant to, but ultimately, we need to live better lives.”
To further explore this link between lifestyle and longevity, Lewington met with multimillionaire tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who recently made headlines with his plans to spend millions each year to reverse his biological age.
Lewington meets with Bryan Johnson at his home in California.“I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to put Bryan in the programme or not, because I was moving away from the whole sensationalist idea of people wanting to live for a really long amount of time,” she says. “But I’m really pleased that I did because he’s making himself a human experiment. He’s testing lots of stuff – some will work, some won’t – but it’s a really interesting experiment. And he’s doing it while being monitored by 30 scientists, but he is still taking risks, of course.”
Bringing longevity into the mainstream
Lewington says that the lifestyle aspect of longevity permeated the entire field. As a non-drinker, she describes her joy at seeing unopened bottles of wine at a longevity event, and being fascinated meeting people who set their alarm clocks to go to bed, rather than to get up.
“I met with founders and people who are working on the science, and they still think that the most important thing we can be doing is to be looking after ourselves properly,” she says. “They weren’t talking about cryo chambers or ice baths – they were talking about making sure you exercise regularly, eat well and get your eight hours sleep. I came back feeling it’s just really important to live your healthiest life. And it’s as simple as that. Although it’s not always that simple to actually do it!”
Through the program, Lewington hopes to help bring the longevity message to a more mainstream audience.
“I’m trying to take away that sensationalist view of longevity being about living to 150, because there’s actual real stuff out there that can help people increase their healthspan to live the later years of their lives better – and that’s probably a more realistic aim,” she says. “Yes, it may end up resulting in a few extra years of life, but I think it’s more about getting people to understand that there is work happening that may mean those final years or decades of our lives don’t have to be so difficult.”
