Nathan Price , 2025-04-30 13:47:00
Current medicine deploys an outdated “find it, then fix it” approach in which disease is diagnosed only after the onset of clinical symptoms, with treatments that merely ameliorate symptoms rather than addressing root causes. This begs the question: What if we could extend healthspan and prevent disease before it starts? And how can we leverage emerging technologies — especially AI — to help accelerate us towards that goal?
While many herald AI’s promise to create boundless abundance for humanity’s future, the most valuable abundance we could deliver would be in health itself- extending far beyond the realm of disease management. By shifting the focus for consumers earlier in the care continuum, AI has the potential to play a transformative role in prevention and personalized health solutions-particularly for health conditions that impact hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
This is where ‘scientific wellness’ comes into play — a precise, data-driven approach that creates custom health plans by tracking changes in a person’s biology over time. In this promising field, artificial intelligence stands ready to play an increasingly powerful role.
Not only is the health impact of consequence to individuals, but the economic implications are also significant. A 2016 analysis in Health Affairs estimated $7.1 trillion in healthcare savings over 50 years from a modest 2.2-year increase in healthspan. A 2021 study published in Nature Aging valued a one-year delay in aging at a staggering $38 trillion based on “willingness to pay” measures.
Beyond disease management: The promise of scientific wellness and prevention
Our healthcare system excels at acute care but struggles with complex chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s — conditions that emerge from interactions between genetics, lifestyle, environment, and aging biology.
Alzheimer’s provides a compelling example of why prevention is crucial. Despite billions invested, drug treatments for advanced Alzheimer’s show minimal benefits, weakly addressing symptoms rather than changing disease trajectory. However, studies like FINGER and POINTER demonstrate that multi-domain lifestyle interventions combining nutrition, physical activity, cognitive training, and vascular risk monitoring can significantly reduce cognitive decline in at-risk populations. It’s far more tractable to keep neurons from dying than to replace them after they’re gone. The difference here lies in the approach to when intervention takes place in an individual’s health journey- the earlier, the better.
The CDC reports that 80% of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes cases could be prevented through lifestyle changes. The challenge? Our healthcare system mostly waits for clinical symptoms to appear before acting, and people lack access to personalized insights that could guide effective prevention, even though they want them now more than ever.
Through a decade of research involving thousands of participants, we’ve discovered that genetic variants significantly affect how individuals respond to lifestyle interventions, that the microbiome can predict weight loss success, and that biological aging trajectories can be altered with targeted interventions. These insights underscore the power of AI-driven personalization to transform health care from a one-size-fits-all model to one that is truly tailored to the individual.
AI: The enabler of personalized prevention & safe intervention
When focusing on extending healthspan, our interventions must differ from those used to treat disease. Since we’re working with generally healthy people, any intervention must have exceptional safety profiles while still being effective.
Natural products, such as targeted supplementation, are one source that can subtly nudge biological systems toward healthier function, typically without the side effects of pharmaceutical interventions. However, the effectiveness of these approaches can depend strongly on personalization because the right combination is often key – just one change is not usually enough to achieve the desired health benefit.
AI now makes true biological personalization possible by analyzing an individual’s unique genetic variants, microbiome composition, and blood markers to create lifestyle and nutrition recommendations that traditional one-size-fits-all approaches cannot match. Where conventional wisdom offers standardized solutions, your biology demands precision.
Real-world examples illustrate why this personalization matters. For instance, if you have any of the genetic variants that block vitamin D absorption, following standard dosing guidelines might leave you deficient despite “doing everything right.” Similarly, your specific gut bacteria may convert phosphatidylcholine, a molecule with benefits to liver and brain, into trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), which can increase your cardiovascular risk—an interaction no general recommendation could account for.
The complexity of the vast number of biological interactions creates a virtually impossible puzzle for individuals to track independently. This is precisely where AI excels — processing vast amounts of personalized data to identify which natural product combinations could work with your unique biological system.
AI enables personalization at scale, delivering both cost-effectiveness and depth of analysis. This approach can: identify potential nutritional needs based on thorough biological analysis rather than generic recommendations; detect subtle changes in health trajectories and address them early, maintaining wellness before disease develops; and guide specific lifestyle modifications tailored to individual biology.
The result transforms overwhelming complexity into simple, actionable recommendations tailored to your body’s specific needs, limitations, and opportunities.
These insights help optimize personal wellness by eliminating guesswork and ensuring recommendations are precisely tailored to an individual’s biology — delivering the right nutrients, in the right dosages, for improved absorption and effectiveness.
A vision for the future – a new era of individualized healthcare
Looking ahead, AI will offer increasingly personalized health insights. With the ability to train large language models and agentic AIs on curated, evidence-backed information, users can receive more accurate answers to their unique health questions. Continuous monitoring through wearables and home diagnostics will provide real-time data that AI systems can analyze to detect subtle changes indicating potential health issues before they manifest as disease.
The real transformation will come when healthcare prioritizes prevention — intervening at the biological level before symptoms ever arise. The center of healthcare delivery will move from the clinic to the home, with AI enabling remote monitoring and personalized guidance.
For consumers, this means greater transparency into their health and more informed, science-backed decisions. For healthcare systems, it’s an important step toward reducing costs by focusing on increasing healthspan rather than treating chronic illness after it develops.
By harnessing AI for prevention rather than just treatment, we have an unprecedented opportunity to transform healthcare and extend human healthspan for generations to come.
Photo: metamorworks, Getty Images
Dr. Nathan Price is the Chief Scientific Officer of Thorne, the leader in science-backed health and wellness solutions for personal performance. He is also Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Human Healthspan at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Previously he was CEO of Onegevity, an AI health intelligence company that merged with Thorne in 2021 and was Professor and Associate Director of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle for a decade.
He is co-author with biotechnology pioneer Lee Hood of a 2023 bestselling book, The Age of Scientific Wellness, published by Harvard University Press. In 2019, he was named one of the 10 Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine, and in 2021 he was appointed to the Board on Life Sciences of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He is also a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and was the 2023 recipient of the Alexander & Mildred Seelig Award for science from the American Nutrition Association.
This post appears through the MedCity Influencers program. Anyone can publish their perspective on business and innovation in healthcare on MedCity News through MedCity Influencers. Click here to find out how.
