Children born today could see average life expectancy pass 100 years within a generation, healthcare executives predicted at the Fortune Leaders Forum in Macau on Sept. 8.
Yet the bigger problem may be figuring out how to pay for it.
“The question is not the availability of all these new technologies. It’s how we’re going to make good medical care accessible to millions, and how we’re going to make it affordable as we age,” said Kelvin Loh, group chief healthcare officer at insurer AIA.
One in four people in Asia-Pacific will be over 60 by 2050, up from around one in seven now. That shift will put even more strain on healthcare systems due to a greater incidence of chronic conditions.
AI drugmakers are betting they can ease that burden by tackling aging at its source, and one says it now has early evidence it’s possible.
“We might have a chance to stop biological aging,” said Feng Ren, co-CEO and head of drug research and development at Insilico Medicine, an AI drug discovery startup. On Sept. 7, Insilico announced that patients taking its experimental fibrosis drug showed signs that their predicted biological age had declined by roughly three years on average, and up to six years on one measure. (Shares are up 11% since it announced the news)
Loh’s take was more measured. “I’m very sure that we will extend life. We may not cure aging, but we are going to extend life. That is for sure,” he said.
Medicine is already turning some terminal diagnoses into manageable ones, Loh said. “Cancer is no more a death sentence,” he said. Stage 4 lung cancer patients once given six months to live “can live for 10 years or more. It’s becoming [a] chronic disease.”
Several speakers pointed to “healthspan,” or the length of time people spend in good health, as the next target for the health sector.
“It’s important that we don’t live longer; we live healthier,” said Keith Choy, president of Asia-Pacific at consumer health company Haleon. He pointed out that people spend roughly the last decade of their lives in poor health or with some kind of disability.
Choy suggested that, in the near future, wearable health technology and AI technology could change the nature of healthcare. “Could you imagine after five or 10 years, or even shorter, maybe everyone…in China’s 1.4 billion population, they can have a personal doctor.”
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