Smart Tech, Healthier Lives

OVERVIEW

Americans are spending more time and money on optimizing their health to care for their future selves. It comes on the heels of the U.S. leading the global longevity economy, which reached $5.2 billion investments in 2022. Nearly half of Americans are willing to spend time ensuring they can live as long as possible. The majority of the over 3,000 Americans surveyed said they spend time ensuring they get optimal sleep during the week, plan healthy meals, and take supplements and vitamins. Smart tech is helping drive people to reach optimal health with wearable tech like FitBit and Apple Watches playing a big role, 38% of Apple Watch users check their watch at least two to three times a day. With a tech-driven transformation, it is helping empower individuals to take proactive steps toward their health, fostering a more informed and health-conscious society.

1. FUTURE DRUGS DESIGNED BY AI

Today, on average, it takes more than 10 years and billions of dollars to develop a new drug. The vision is to use AI to make drug discovery faster and cheaper. Google is raising the stakes with its DeepMind AI research laboratory, in partnership with Isomorphic Labs, released AlphaFold 3, an AI model that will help predict the structure and interactions of all of life’s molecules. Google is hoping to improve on the current drug discovery process, which has a 90% failure rate, largely because scientists have a limited map of all the tiny components of the human body and the ways diseases interact with them. If the AI can predict how a proposed drug will affect the body, it can find promising candidates more quickly. AlphaFold 3 will allow researchers to test more hypotheses before committing to the slow and expensive testing protocols that still need to be carried out in human trials before a new drug gets approved. Lilly is another AI startup that has been using generative AI to search through millions of molecules. With AI able to move at a speed of discovery which in five minutes can generate as many molecules as Lilly could synthesize in an entire year in traditional wet labs. Scientists have said that AI’s norm-shattering conjectures are sometimes fruitful. While independent scientists hailed AlphaFold 3 as a significant step forward, there is criticism for the system. It is still early days for AI drug discovery. There are a lot of AI companies making claims they can’t back up. Some scientists are saying that it’s not good at predicting how proteins can change shape in living systems in response to their environment impacting drug efficacy in the real world. 

2. EQUINOX IS OPTIMIZING HEALTH FOR $40,000 A YEAR

Equinox is taking the idea of trying not to die at the gym to a whole new level. The luxury fitness company has partnered with lab-test startup Function Health to launch a program focused on improving overall health and increasing longevity that will cost $40,000 a year. “Optimize By Equinox” is an extensive initiative targeted at people with strong opinions on a wealth tax trying to defy the aging process.The Optimize membership includes three, 60-minute training sessions per week with a top-level trainer. It also includes two half-hour sessions a month with a nutrition coach, two half-hour sessions a month with a sleep coach and one massage therapy session per month. In all, the program amounts to 16 hours a month of coaching and training, according to Equinox. Services include a functional health test for 100 biomarkers from everything internal like from heart, liver, and kidney labs to a check on cancer markers. An Equinox “concierge” pulls all the tests and data together and helps the member design a personalized plan to improve their overall health and fitness. Each member will have a core team that includes a fitness trainer, a nutrition coach and sleep coach as well as a massage therapist. Equinox will run its own battery of physical tests, then take all that information and create a personalized health and fitness plan. People are willing to pay. Households making more than $250,000 per year were far more likely to spend their time and money on their health than those in households making less than $50,000 with 46% of higher-income Americans say they will use the majority of discretionary income on improving health and longevity compared to 34% of lower-income Americans. And, over half of higher-income Americans are willing to participate in clinical trials aimed at extending life span. 

3. BLUEBIRD AND CASGEVY AIM TO HELP TREAT SICKLE CELL 

Despite scientists’ understanding of sickle cell’s cause, treatments have been few and far between in the decades since discovery of defective hemoglobin as the disease’s root. Bluebird estimates it can treat the cells of only 85 to 105 patients each year and that includes not just sickle cell patients, but also patients with a much rarer disease, beta thalassemia, who can receive a similar gene therapy. The treatment, called Lyfgenia and cleared by the Food and Drug Administration in December, is made from a patient’s own stem cells, which are loaded with a gene encoding for an oxygen-carrying protein that’s defective in people with the blood disease. Lyfgenia is one of two genetic therapies that offer hopes of something close to a cure. The other, called Casgevy and also approved last December, was the first therapy built around the gene editing technology CRISPR to be cleared by regulators. Both therapies are among the most expensive drugs on the market. Bluebird set Lyfgenia’s price at $3.1 million, while Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which developed Casgevy with CRISPR Therapeutics, is charging $2.2 million for its treatment. The high cost has raised concerns about patient access as well as impact on the budget of Medicaid, which covers many of the 20,000 or so people in the U.S. estimated to have sickle cell. Kendric Cromer, a 12-year-old boy from a suburb of Washington, became the first person in the world with sickle cell disease to begin a commercially approved gene therapy that may cure the condition. FIve patients had begun cell collection for treatment with Casgevy, which is also approved for severe beta thalassemia. 

4. THE SPA OF THE FUTURE IS COMING TO AUSTIN

Corvas Brinkerhoff, co-founder of the immersive arts experience Meow Wolf is focusing on building a whole new spa concept in Austin called, Submersive. Brinkerhoff said he traveled to dozens of bathhouses around the world, studying how various cultures engage with communal bathing. Through his self-guided research, Brinkerhoff realized that the U.S. has yet to develop its own robust bathhouse culture. It is planned to be a 25,000-square-foot therapeutic spa that will feature video projection, immersive art, steam, lasers, and AI technology. It is going to be designed as a hub-and spoke-model with twelve rooms that will encircle a main gathering space, and visitors will be able to choose how they proceed from one space to the next. Each spa will have its own unique look, sound, and temperature. While Submersive is currently designed to give guests control over their experience, the team is at work on an AI-powered quiz that will suggest an ideal route through the rooms based on an individual’s state of mind. Brinkerhoff’s ultimate goal is to use neuroscience to help visitors achieve elevated states of mind, like awe and euphoria. The first half of the spa is set to open in 2026, while the completed structure will debut in 2028. Submersive’s team estimates that it will attract 200,000 visitors a year at a ticket price of $88 per person. While the Austin location is the only one currently in the works, he has ambitions to expand Submersive across the U.S., and even globally. 

5. TWO CHAIRS IS HINGE BUT FOR THERAPY  

With an increasing demand for mental health services, one person wanted to change the therapy game. In 2017, CEO Alex Katz founded Two Chairs, a company that uses technology to match patients with the right therapists. The name Two Chairs is a reference to the patient-therapist relationship, sometimes known as the therapeutic alliance. The goal for the company is to expand access to high quality mental health care. It provides both virtual and in-person psychotherapy for adults with a wide range of mental health issues across the acuity spectrum. Two Chairs has been focused on improving the quality of mental health care by prioritizing the experiences of both patients and therapists starting with the right match. Two Chairs is typically able to get patients a matching appointment within two days. Every morning that a patient has a Two Chairs therapy session, they complete a digital check-in that takes no more than five minutes. Once a patient completes this check-in, Two Chairs tabulates results in a standardized clinical dashboard where therapists can view any changes to patients’ PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scores. Then patients receive a snapshot of their progress in areas such as self-esteem, mood, sleep, restlessness and eating. Patients also receive reflection prompts and insights from their clinicians, which aid them in developing a better understanding of their mental health progress.The startup employs a team of more than 500 full-time and part-time therapists. Nearly half of these therapists identify as Black or Indigenous people of color, 24% identify as LGBTQ, and 16% are multilingual. It’s proven successful so far with 90% of Two Chairs patients making it to at least the fourth session with their therapist compared to an industry average of just 36%.

6. MRNA-4157 (V940) TAKES SKIN CANCER HEAD ON

It’s not often you see the word “cure” being thrown around, but when melanoma patients have had surgery to remove the initial skin cancer, it’s hoped the vaccine will be a potential life-saver through preventing its spread. Known as mRNA-4157 (V940), the vaccine was recently given to a man named Steve Young, a melanoma survivor and one of the first patients to receive the new treatment. The recent study is a phase III trial and follows a successful phase II trial in which vaccines dramatically reduced the risk of the cancer returning in melanoma patients. “This is one of the most exciting things we’ve seen in a really long time,” said Dr. Heather Shaw, the trial’s national coordinating investigator. The vaccine itself is individualized, functioning by triggering a patient’s immune system to fight back against the patient’s specific cancer and tumor. By targeting “tumor neoantigens,” or the specific markers of each patient’s particular tumor, the vaccine can essentially alert the immune system to the presence of the tumor and help it fight it off naturally with an anti-tumor immune response. The implications extend beyond the return of melanoma and could have promising benefits to patients with other cancers as well.

TAKEAWAY

The evolution of technology in health and wellness has dramatically transformed how we approach and manage our well-being. With the health and wellness industry booming, expecting to hit $14 trillion by 2032, health is becoming a major focus for consumers. These advancements enable continuous health monitoring, early detection of potential issues, and customized treatment plans, significantly improving health outcomes and empowering individuals to take charge of their wellness. The synergy between tech and health is paving the way for a future where optimal wellness is achievable for all.

Visual Design by Jonné Pratt, Research and Write Up by Catherine Marsh.

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