1、H o w w i l l n e w t e c h n o l o g i e s ma k e a g e-r e l a t e d d i s e a s e s a t h i n g o f t h e p a s t?Building an engaged aging strategy2|Engaged aging3Building an engaged aging strategy|In September 2016,Mark Zuckerberg stood in front of a packed auditorium to ask a provocative quest
2、ion:“Can we cure,prevent or manage all disease by the end of this century?”Sound audacious?It is.Through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative,the Facebook founder and his wife,Dr.Priscilla Chan,are dedicating US$3 billion over the next decade to prevent,cure and manage some of the worlds costliest disease
3、s,including heart disease,cancer,stroke and neurological disorders.1 Not by chance,these global chronic killers also happen to be increasingly common as the worlds population ages and grows more sedentary.If ever there was a time for bold statements and even bolder ambitions,now is the moment.It is
4、estimated that sometime before 2020 for the first time ever the global population of individuals aged 65 and older will outnumber children under age five.2 With todays life expectancy,the health care expenditures could be enormous:the World Economic Forum estimates treating chronic,non-communicable
5、disorders could cost an estimated US$47 trillion from 2010 to 2030.3 4|E n g a g e d a g i n g By some estimates,we spend about 50 times more as a society managing diseases as they occur than we do on research that might prevent those diseases from happening in the first place.New genetic and digita
6、l technologies could make aging more sustainable,accelerating the discovery and creation of solutions(see Figure 1).“Today we are healthy in the absence of disease,”says Ken Bloom,President of Human Longevity.“But in reality,we are only healthy because we havent identified the events that will age u
7、s,”Bloom notes.After years-long exposure to insults such as ultraviolet radiation and oxidative stress,our cells reach a point where they can no longer maintain optimal function and falter,which manifests as age-related disease.The goal is to use transformative technologies to delay the breakdown of
8、 function and extend the health span the ability to age disease-free.In the near term that means deploying sensors and Internet of things(IoT)technology in phones and ever smaller wearables to cost-effectively monitor,and then manage,known diseases associated with aging.Longer term,innovations in ge
9、netic and regenerative medicine,coupled with cheap computing power,improved analytics and a growing understanding of both human behavior and the biology of aging will move treatment upstream to the pre-disease state,where conditions should be cheaper and easier to remedy.Yet the real shift to wellne
10、ss will come when pre-emptive efforts are so entrenched in day-to-day life that they no longer merit the label“prevention.”Wellness will be just another part of the normal routine,like brushing ones teeth or washing ones face.Wh en lif e sp an means h ealth sp anF igure 1:E nab ling tec h no lo gies
11、 to mak e aging mo re sustainab leD isease managementD isease p rev entio nD r i v e r s o fc h a n g eC h anging demo grap h ic sR ising h ealth c are c o stsI nc reasing c h ro nic diseaseE v o lv ingc usto merex p ec tatio nsS o l u t i o n sE n a b l e r sI o T dev ic esW earab lesR egenerativ e
12、medic ineArtificialintelligenc eG eneticadv anc es5 Building an engaged aging strategy|A range of technologies are needed to move us down the path to lifelong wellness.Many components already exist or will in the near future(see Figure 2).Consider the genetic and scientific advances that underpin th
13、e emerging field of precision medicine(i.e.,getting the right drug to the right patient at the right time).With the ability to sequence a persons entire genome poised to cost less than US$100,it will soon be reasonable to map the genetic blueprints of large numbers of individuals.As a result,it will
14、 be possible to uncover rare signals that,when linked to observable characteristics called phenotypes identify new markers for disease risk.Ongoing efforts to understand the human genome will be further enhanced by combining genetic data with a range of other data types,including:Traditional clinica
15、l laboratory results So-called“multi-omics”analyses that quantify collections of biological molecules,including the totality of proteins or genetic transcripts Real-time data generated by wearables and other mobile technologies Behavioral data gleaned from social media sites(e.g.,Facebook and Twitte
16、r)and advocacy organizations(e.g.,PatientsLikeMe)The integration of these data will ultimately transform health care and expand precision medicine approaches to health writ-large.Accelerating this shift to precision health,what researchers also call scientific wellness,are a range of enabling tools that include third-party clouds for data sharing and artificial intelligence(AI).Indeed,one branch of AI,deep learning,could shorten the time to reach R&D milestones.Advances in computational power no