Lee Hood’s company Arivale showed us how to do preventive, personalized health care. His book explores the science—and the missed opportunity
Arivale treated its community like family, hosting happy hours and many private events, including cooking lessons that focused on in-depth discussions of the science of personalized health. I often met Hood, Price, and other scientists at these events, including once when Hood, who in his 80s boasts about doing 100 push-ups daily to stay in shape, chided his younger co-author Price for not doing the same. “It’s not fair,” quipped Price. “He has a 40-year head start!”
Long before Arivale, Lee Hood was an acclaimed genomics pioneer, the inventor of an automated DNA sequencer and other instruments that paved the way for the Human Genome Project, and he had played a key role in founding numerous biotech companies, including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Rosetta Inpharmatics, and many others. Along the way, he became convinced that the human body is a holistic system, not a reductionist series of parts to be poked separately when things go wrong.
Counting the data from Arivale, he and his fellow scientists eventually collected detailed physiological measures for more than 5,000 individuals and, importantly, the data was longitudinal—they took measurements regularly over time. When any of the 5,000 people later became ill, the scientists were able to “rewind the tape” to pinpoint exactly which biomarkers had changed—in some cases a year or more before any symptoms appeared. With each new such case uncovered, they were able to apply what they learned to others in the program—in some cases forestalling completely the potential bad outcomes.
For instance, “Lynn” was an apparently healthy, active woman of normal weight who ate an excellent diet full of vegetables, fruits, and lean meats. But her stubbornly high cholesterol levels would have signaled to a regular physician the need for a simple prescription for a statin or some other cholesterol-lowering drug. But the Arivale team, with its systems approach, noticed something else: thyroid markers that indicated an early-stage autoimmune condition. By adjusting her diet and adding some over-the-counter supplements, her thyroid function improved—and her cholesterol returned to normal.
Read the full story here:
The book is available here:
The Age of Scientific Wellness: Why the Future of Medicine Is Personalized, Predictive, Data-Rich, and in Your Hands
“Arivale would open the same high-resolution P4 approach to anyone willing to pay the $2,000 annual price for access to their state-of-the-art medical testing.”
The Company did not survive, and this was only $2,000 per year for testing
“I am delighted to welcome Dr. Hood to the Buck family as our Chief Innovation Officer and Distinguished Professor. The opportunity to form a Center with Lee Hood and his Phenome Health team will be transformational for the Buck,” said Dr. Verdin. “We believe combining the novel computational and human characterization engine of Phenome Health with the Buck’s expertise in geroscience, the biology of aging, has the power to redefine how we age and treat—or prevent altogether—the chronic diseases of aging.”
Phenome Health’s platform combines whole-genome sequencing with phenomic data, including social determinants of health, electronic health records, self-tracking data from wearables and self-assessments, cognitive and psychiatric brain assessments, and clinical samples of the blood, saliva, and microbiome. Using next-generation AI, the team integrates these data to understand the biology of aging, its associated diseases and interventions targeting the aging process. The Center will be the nexus for these two distinguished research partners to advance healthspan for everyone. “I could not be more delighted to enter into this partnership with the Buck,” said Dr. Hood. “The Center is uniquely positioned to translate data into understanding healthy aging, ushering in scientific wellness and ultimately extending each individual’s healthspan.”
a broken health care system at a time when a recession looms.
I think that something have to be working at some time to be broken. Things that may not work as well as we want may still work as well as they ever did & if they aren’t working worse than they ever did, I would not call them broken.
This is the the way people talk, where the literal sense of the phrase & what is meant aren’t actually the same. I feel that calling it broken isn’t too helpful, because it has a lot of overtones of judgement instead of acknowledging that it’s a work in progress.
Yes, this is a pet peeve of mine. Yes, the system could work better & hopefully, we’ll figure out ways to make that happen. Glasses, fullness & all that … at least we aren’t still bleeding people to death, there has been progress.
On the one hand, we have had arguably some of the best health care available to those who can afford it.
It is amazing that, when the chips are down, how many wealthy people including the Saudis, etc. choose to fly to the U.S. for anything really serious. I also observed this during the 7 years I spent in Europe. In spite of the “Wonderful European Model” people who could afford it tended to head to the U.S. for anything serious.
On the other hand, our system has been rampant with doctors being bought by tobacco and big pharma, etc. Real doctors extolled the merits of particular cigarette brands. Some of us are old enough to remember going to the doctor’s office and getting free samples of drugs on the way out. Doctors have been paid to prescribe certain medications and brands. I don’t know how rampant this is now, but it was pretty common in the past.
So, yes, IMO the healthcare system in the U.S. has been broken for quite some time.
The problem with the US healthcare system is that you need insurance or you are SOL. Insurance even with Medicare isn’t cheap either.
Here in Hong Kong, many people rely on public healthcare because they don’t have insurance. In the US, without insurance you can choose bankruptcy or death. Not a very nice choice to make.
Where is this notion that American healthcare is better?? Maybe it is just more capitalistic and are willing to take on patients who are willing to pay. And if you are seriously ill, you are scared and scare people are easier to open their wallets.
And in reality, I cite a friend oncologist, the American healthcare is better for 1 maybe 2 percent of patient that would profit from treatments outside guidelines.
Nowhere did I say the U.S. healthcare system is better. What I do believe is that we have a preponderance of the world’s best doctors. The main problem in the U.S. is access to the system and incentivized fraud.
MHO, the main problem with medicine, in this country or any other, is the lack of real solutions to many of the problems people have.
A lot of people have chronic health issues & by definition, chronic health issues are ones for which medicine doesn’t have a solution. If it didn’t, the problem would be solved, not chronic.
I think that the main thing medicine needs to improve is a lot of research. Research really does find solutions & the solutions can be made available to people. It doesn’t do any good to have access to health care if the health care can’t solve their problems. They still have the problem, they just go see doctors about it, who don’t help – not because they don’t care, but because they don’t have help to give.
“A lot of people have chronic health issues & by definition, chronic health issues are ones for which medicine doesn’t have a solution”
I would disagree. Most of those chronic diseases are treatable and preventable with lifestyle changes. We as a society have just chosen to ignore diet and exercise.
Its education not research thats needed. Doctors can’t help much as they aren’t given time for education, patients have roadblocks to exercise and good diet.
A third approach is to estimate the percentage of disease that is potentially preventable by reducing multiple behavioral risk factors using prospective cohort studies. Among U.S. adults, more than 90 percent of type 2 diabetes, 80 percent of CAD, 70 percent of stroke, and 70 percent of colon cancer are potentially preventable by a combination of nonsmoking, avoidance of overweight, moderate physical activity, healthy diet, and moderate alcohol consumption (Willett 2002).
In my mountaineering days, we used to talk about not dying of stupidity. The unfortunate truth is most people die too young from some combination of stupidity, stubbornness, and bad luck.
