How Technology and Artificial Intelligence is Revolutionizing Longevity Today

We’re living in one of the most exciting times in history. With the advancement of medicine, human beings are living much longer and more productive lives. Today, for example, the average life expectancy of an American is 80 years. And as we speak, this number is expected to shoot much higher in the next couple of years thanks to innovative technological changes in our healthcare system that will improve the quality of life. There are several distinct signs of this impending longevity revolution. One of them is in the world of tech—specifically, how innovations in both software (artificial intelligence) and hardware (wearables) are harmonizing the healthcare system. Indeed, the adoption of personalized medicine can help us extend our lifespans by innovating drug discovery, health monitoring, treatment, and the availability of diagnostics. So, how exactly will wearables and artificial intelligence influence the way we approach personalized medicine to enhance longevity? Let’s begin with wearables that are now providing patients with round-the-clock healthcare. Apple Watch, for example, not only functions as an activity tracker, but also serves as your very own personalized healthcare device that features emergency SOS, fall detection, an ECG, irregular heart rhythm detection, and heart rate monitoring. Very soon, wearables will also have the ability to seamlessly measure your blood glucose and blood pressure for people suffering from diabetes. This is just another prime example of how the biggest companies in tech will gradually morph into the largest health companies in the world. Another example of the massive potential that wearables have in personalized healthcare today is the Oura Ring. The Oura Ring, for example, markets itself as your very own tiny personalized wellness computer. This nifty gadget collects precise data about your body, regardless of whether you’re active or sleeping. It records important data like your blood volume pulse and your blood temperature. With on-hand information like this available, there’s no denying that wearable devices have become inseparable when we talking about providing the best healthcare practices. They continue to monitor health outside the walls of medical facilities like clinics and hospitals. Longevity has also been strongly linked to regular sleep patterns. And so, in recent years, several gadgets for tracking sleep have hit the market. Fitbit, for example, is a gadget that sold more than 80 million devices since 2010, thereby placing wearables on the map. The company further introduced its Sleep Stages technology in 2017 that utilizes heart rate variability and motion detection to determine how much time users spend awake and the different depths of sleep they experience throughout the night. Aside from recording data on individuals as they sleep, the technology also provides plenty of information for sleep researchers. According to Fitbit, the device has the most extensive longitudinal sleep database in the entire world. Having these baseline health measurements at our fingertips provides us with a new level of awareness regarding our health; which is important if we plan to hardwire healthy habits into our lifestyle. Yes, making such positive steps as exercising regularly or getting sufficient sleep could be what it takes to add a few more decades to our current human lifespan. Now let’s take look at Artificial Intelligence. How is it influencing personalized medicine and how can it extend our lifespans by enhancing healthcare delivery? Perhaps the greatest example of how AI has revolutionized healthcare is through IBM’s supercomputer, Watson. According to a report released by World Health, this artificial computer has consumed a mind-blowing 2 million pages which contain 14,700 hours of clinical training, 25,000 training cases, and 600,000 pieces of medical evidence. And the computer continues to consume more medical content every day! With all this information in its database, Watson has become a groundbreaking and revolutionary medical resource. Unfortunately, it still does not have the capability to make sense of all the information it has consumed so far. Nevertheless, Watson is a fine example of the potential that AI has to diagnose patients. Diagnostics are vital for the early detection and successful treatment of several diseases that have significantly reduced our lifespans. The medical company, WellPoint, claims that in its tests, Watson successfully diagnosed lung cancer in 90% of all trials. Human doctors that did not use this AI only managed to successfully diagnose cancer 50% of the time. When it comes to treatment, Watson’s vault of health information greatly enhanced this too. The computer was capable of targeting personalized cancer treatment plans. In fact, in 2018, IBM signed a partnership with the Department of Veteran Affairs (two years after the Cancer Moonshot Initiative was launched) to provide veterans with precision oncology. And since then, Watson has given precise cancer care to over 2,700 veterans. New technologies have a great impact on our healthcare system today, which in turn, impact our longevity and aging. And aside from technology, we can also extend our lives by building healthy habits that enable us to detect disease early.