Four For Friday | Dec 1, 2023
LF96 | Healthspan XPrize, personal longevity services, sports prescriptions and how Japan solved housing,
Welcome to a Looking Forward’s Four For Friday. Four things that have piqued my interest this week. Enjoy!
$101 Healthspan prize, powered by Saudi Arabia
XPrize announces a new $101m prize for healthspan-improving therapeutics, with funding provided by Hevolution, Saudi Arabia’s $1bn/year longevity factory.
The FT on personal longevity services
This FT piece covers the rise of new personal, concierge wellness services, which are being launched every week.
Sport ‘prescriptions’
A rather pleasing concept that has found success in using tailored sports programs to support treatment and recovery for chronic illnesses, as they call it. ‘Community disease management’. This is a powerful idea but facing challenges to scale within a health system doesn’t do well with ‘alternative’ approaches to care delivery.
How Japan solved housing
Thought-provoking video showing why Japan is by far the cheapest big city to live in, which came as a surprise. According to the video, it’s due to a 55% inheritance tax that discourages people leaving housing to their offspring, low quality housing (reflecting this) with a 30-year life expectancy, a lack of building regulations (so offices and living are mixed up) and a lack of local housing boards, which tend to say no to new builds.
That’s all for this week. As always, feedback welcome. Feel free to share insights or links of interest.
- Stephen