A new book, published in September 2020, about how artificial intelligence is helping us live longer. Author Tina Woods (Co-founder and CEO of Longevity International which runs the UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group for Longevity) combines interviews and insights from experts in the fields of health, technology, society and longevity on how technology can be harnessed to help us live healthier, longer and better lives.

With a foreward by Professor Andrew Scott, co-author of The 100 Year Life and The New Long Life, the book sets out to describes how we can change how we view health and the steps to take to protect it. Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic which underlines how our health is our greatest asset, more than GDP, the book discusses the impact that AI has on understanding the cellular basis of aging and how AI is changing the way we understand the wider determinants of health across the life course.

Overall the book aims to motivate people to take more interest in how ethical use of technology and data sharing is important for our personal and community health resilience. As we build assets for our multi-stage lives, technology can play a greater role to personalise our health, wealth and wellbeing plans and how we can use this “life-data” to help predict and manage chronic diseases of aging. A key message is the mindset shift needed to see health as our greatest personal and societal asset rather than thinking health is about treating disease. As the author states, “the book sets out arguments for why we need a societal system more focussed on social capital, more guided by values that matter most to us in which technology can be more powerfully deployed as a force for good”.

This article was recommended by Julia Randell-Khan, Consulting Fellow at the Stanford Center on Longevity.