Bengaluru: Doctors, researchers, and industry representatives on Friday discussed the growing focus on "longevity" as a transformative concept in health and consumer markets. Experts believe in its potential to reshape ageing through data-driven healthcare and rethinking end-of-life medical spending.
At a round-table on longevity and lifestyle medicine at IISc, Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of Infosys, said, "We have to invest in research. I don't think we have figured out everything about the brain."
Citing research on 70% of the money on health being spent in the last three years of a person's life, he asked, "Can we change that? That's the opportunity India has. India is the laboratory for the world in the 21st century."
Prashanth Prakash, founding partner of the US venture capital firm Accel Partners in India, pointed out how nomenclatures lead to inflections. For instance, before the technology was called ‘cloud computing', multiple things were happening, he said. "But as the word came in, the whole world adopted it. Similarly, people have been talking about preventive medicine and lifestyle medicine. And now people say this is the future," he said.
Shayna C Parekh, medical school development officer at IISc, said there are eight foundational pillars of lifestyle medicine: nutrition, exercise, sleep, avoiding toxic substances, stress management, social connection, purpose & meaning, and the environment.