Bio-Aging Tracker

XPRIZE

Outcome

A device for people to measure their own biological age, the pace at which they are aging and the relevance to their health. The device would have an interconnected interface for people to share their data and compare it to others, and it would provide advice for actions they can take to improve their health and slow down their aging process.

Impact

A bio-aging tracker would increase public awareness of the aging process, and provide personalized consultation to every individual, thus helping increase accessibility of effective treatments. The collected and shared data could help accelerate drug development and approval processes, and would contribute to the eventual development of a unified theory of aging. Finally, as people become more aware of their health, they would be able to take better care of themselves, thus postponing the emergence of aging-related diseases.

Relevant Technologies and Techniques

• Sensors
• 5G internet (for data sharing)
• Crowdsourcing (for funding and data collection)
• Open source (for data sharing)
• Personalization of treatments
• Gamification
• Citizen science

NickOttens

We're wondering if we need to consider this as a separate breakthrough, or if we can merge it with others, for example, Individualized Play to Motivate Better Health Outcomes and High-Fidelity Visualization of Aging Outcomes.

@AlexZhavoronkov, @hjforman, @Polina_veritas, what do you think?

Polina_veritas

@NickOttens I think this one could be merged with High-Fidelity Visualization of Aging Outcomes

AlexZhavoronkov

I agree with Polina. I think that the most valuable data is gene expression data. So the age tracker needs to be connected to a system analyzing gene expression.

hjforman

There are too many ways in which we age for any one or two measurements to provide an accurate assessment of biological age. DNA methylation, which may be equivalent to tree rings, seems a measure of chronological aging. There are people who can barely walk but retain cognitive ability and vice versatility.

NickOttens

@Jay, @erinyelland, do you agree?