In 2050, 31 countries, including China, will have the same percentage of elderly people as Italy today. Our country can be a “pilot country” in this sense. Also because we not only age, but we do so increasingly healthier. According to Nicola Palmarini, expert in innovation and longevity and director of the NICA – UK National Innovation Center for Aging, the organization created by the British government for the development and promotion of innovative solutions dedicated to the longevity economy, we are transforming from the old age society to the longevity society.
On a global scale, among the longest-lived countries in the world, Italy is second only to Japan. But how is it possible to “hand down” this value and transform it into an exportable asset? A natural pool from which to draw “direct” experience on the topic, relational models and lifestyles to refer to and the famous “Mediterranean diet”, these are some of the factors underlying the longevity of our country, according to Palmarini. “The opportunity is in longevity and not in healthcare” says the expert.
According to research by the World Health Organization – WHO, human health is influenced by five key domains “not linked to disease”: 36% by behavioral models, 22% by genetics, 24% by social circumstances, 7% from environmental exposures. Only 11% is healthcare. Therefore, if healthcare today (rightly) plays an increasingly central role in the political and corporate agendas and budgets of our country, the key to longevity could also lie elsewhere. To put it in the words of Palmarini “longevity is a journey, not a destination”, that is, just as a journey starts from the people who decide to undertake it, it needs the right companions to be appreciated and exploited and the right routes to make it pleasant, long, satisfying. In a more specific and less metaphorical sense, this journey is made of a combination of human factors and experiences, research, technologies, processes, innovation of business models, translated into services available through a go-to-market logic available to everyone: citizens and businesses understood as a microcosm of society. In this sense, a synergy between institutions, companies and workers could represent a decisive step to instill this culture in the collective imagination and make it reality.
The markers of aging. Research is making giant strides in the ‘longevity market’, just think of the new technologies, unimaginable until a few months ago, that research communities have at their disposal today; hardware and software with great potential capable of studying and “hacking”, as Palmarini explains, the “markers of aging”, measurable biological characteristics associated with the human aging process. “Most of the aging biomarkers considered so far are body- or performance-related (blood-based biomarkers, loss of function, epigenetic clocks), while we know that psychological and emotional factors (often considered as “soft” metrics and subjective, but which can now be collected through effortless data capture and measured as AI-enabled digital markers) have an important impact on health openness and resilience.”
At the same time, it is increasingly important to also take into account environmental and behavioral factors that significantly impact people’s health and resilience. In a word, we talk about “exposome”, or “that discipline that describes all the factors that influence health, including behavior, environment and lifestyle, also responsible for the health of the planet, as recognized for the first time at COP28”. Research, according to Palmarini, is, in fact, increasingly moving in the direction of an application of new technologies in the fields of study and analysis of climate and omics technologies – those disciplines of biology that study the molecular and cellular aspects of living organisms such as genomics, proteomics or metagenomics – precisely in order to understand the link between climate and health.
Is, therefore, a near future possible where man will be able to live beyond the limits achieved? Perhaps it is too early to answer this question, but the search for the answer has certainly already begun. According to Palmarini, 2024 will be the year of the definitive boom in the subject: from a niche for followers to a multi-channel mass media discussion. I believe this is the trigger for a change not so much of life, but of perspective. Because there is no sector or industry that will not be called upon to redesign policies, services, products and narratives.
