“Changing the broken healthcare system in the U.S. from its focus on disease to a focus on data driven wellness and prevention is how we will predict and manage our own health going forward,” said world-renowned scientist Dr. Leroy Hood MD PhD to Rotarians at our first meeting at Plymouth Church.
While Dr. Hood is affiliated with Providence where he serves as Emeritus Science Advisor, his studies focus on Alzheimer’s Disease, cancer, and wellness. He told Rotarians of his genome/phenome project that aims to bring scientific (quantitative) data driven wellness to the U.S. health care system.
The data driven approach projects your “health span” for how long you can live healthy.
“Data driven science, with AI applications, can analyze your genome/phenome to determine your health security and threats,” he said.
The term “genome to phenome” describes the connection and causation between the genetic makeup of an animal (genome) and the totality of all phenotypes, or the observable physical or physiological traits or characteristics (phenome).
He admits to a chronological age of 85, but states his biological age is 70 based on his personal genome/phenome projection with actions he has taken for diet, exercise and mental health. He fasts, meditates to reduce stress, does 150 push-ups a day and attests to how individual choices including environment can affect your “health span”. He encouraged Rotarians to visit genome health website to deduce your individual biological age.
He sees a future where metrics for wellness will reveal significant cost savings along with early detection of chronic disease such as diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s using types of big data from Electronic Health Records (EHRs), Genomic Data, and Wearable Device Data with others to plot individual wellness. Integrating these data sources enables providers an understanding of disease patterns to improve early detection, treatment and preventive measures.
He concluded by forecasting how wellness and prevention cost savings will come from AI taking complicated data to provide actionable steps.
Rotarian Maddy Vonhoff delivered the day’s short program about the work of the International Service Committee, Seattle Rotary Service Foundation and grants that made a dramatic difference around the world. She described how grants from our club took the lead as other clubs join to fund swim lessons for children in Thailand, safe drinking water in Cameroon, and mitigating the cervical cancer epidemic in Bolivia.
-Thanks for this week's excellent report from our new venue, Pete!
