Turning data into action is the fundamental longevity step we must support

Elevate Chief Medical Officer Nitin Shori on why contextualizing health data is the next critical step in longevity.

At a time when mainstream interest in longevity is growing at a rapid pace, there’s a critical role to help people navigate unprecedented levels of health insight.

Everyone has a sea of data they could access about their body. The rise of wearable tech and self-testing has, of course, fuelled this over recent years, and we’re now entering an era where advanced preventative diagnostics will become more accessible to more people.

Our job is to transform this data into action – turning it into knowledge with the power to significantly impact a person’s life. This is the fundamental step in longevity healthcare; by understanding their body and detecting risks early, an individual can respond and take control of their health trajectory.

Data needs context

In the past year alone, the growth in trending products and lifestyle culture geared toward longevity has seen attitudes towards healthcare shift with consumers. From the vast array of home DNA and medical testing kits now being marketed to ‘biohacking’ products and the highly publicised Oura rings, longevity has hit the mainstream.

Being able to access more information about our own bodies is a good thing and there are masses of new insights available if we want them. But data needs medical context – and can be open to misinterpretation.

Thinking back a couple of decades, the internet had already opened a world of medical information (and disinformation). There are now a billion health searches on Google every day, but the results rarely give the context you need. I’ve seen this countless times working as a general practitioner. As a basic example, search for the cause of your chronic cough, and you may immediately believe you have lung cancer, but the reality is asthma is usually far more likely.

The same goes for preventative testing; there’s a growing interest in proactive AI-supported body scans and these are a useful element of proactive healthcare, but the more medical context we have, the more impact the results will have. Couple these with advanced blood profiling and polygenic risk analysis, and we have a much clearer picture of a person’s health, their genetic strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately the steps they can take to improve their long-term health. This is where preventative healthcare can excel – providing not just data, but the guidance that directly relates to current health, future risk and lifestyle decisions.

A shift in mindset

A reactive approach to healthcare continues to put pressure on state healthcare systems. Treating illness, rather than acting at a much earlier stage. We now have the technology available and the opportunity to do things differently, but change takes time and from an NHS perspective, doctors are restricted by resources. We have seen decades of behaviour change campaigns in the UK – generally highlighting the risk factors of major causes of death and poor health in Britain, such as certain cancers, stroke, heart disease and obesity. But what was once more theoretical and generalised, can now be brought into focus with individual health insight and personalised support.

For the NHS, there is a huge amount of groundwork and funding needed to get to this stage, though. The focus remains on standard checks and management of existing long-term conditions, like diabetes and asthma, and some specific cancer screening programmes. Supporting more patients to take a proactive approach to their health is crucial. Giving people more insight, but importantly, helping them to understand it, so they can act upon it.

This isn’t about trying to live forever. It is about being able to stay healthier for longer. We are on the brink of the biggest healthcare shift we have seen in our lifetime. But access to advanced diagnostic technologies and implementation of proactive healthcare programmes varies hugely when we look at it on a global scale – and from a UK perspective, these disparities can be seen on a regional-level too.

As we enter this new era of healthcare, the UK epicentre shouldn’t just be focused just on London – those seeking preventative healthcare should be able to access support across the country.

The impending workplace trend

Currently, the private health sector is playing a big role in the development of longevity programmes, and it’s bridging a gap that the NHS can’t fill. Advanced preventative healthcare, therefore, tends to be self-funded by the individual. And there is a huge opportunity for employers to step up in our evolving healthcare landscape.

Research commissioned by Elevate this year found two thirds of UK employees want to be more proactive about their health – and more than half (56 per cent) would be more likely to accept a job with an employer who actively supports their long-term health.

From a corporate perspective, there is growing interest in being among the first employers to introduce a new type of healthcare benefit – going beyond the often-underutilised annual health checks historically provided. The deployment of proactive healthcare benefits varies greatly by sector though. Industries such as finance and tech have been early adopters. There’s a drive to find new ways to attract and retain employees, to tackle burnout in the workplace and the impact this can have on conditions such as heart disease – so employees can take control of their health before issues arise. A prime example is the high growth startup community. Recent research from Sifted suggested more than half of founders had experienced burnout in the past 12 months. Interestingly, we’ve found private equity firms are now investing in the health of the people in a startup, not just the business itself.

Health number crunching

Health data needs to go beyond the numbers, charts and risk ratios. It needs clinical expertise combined with the latest technology, to provide a clear route to better health and longevity.

We must avoid important health messages drowning in a mass of data, and instead allow people to understand what their body is telling them and enable them to respond to it.

Our perspective on health is shifting, we can’t let data-overload blur it.

About Nitin Shori

Dr Nitin Shori has been at the forefront of digital healthcare in the UK over the past 17 years, and is chief medical officer of new preventative health platform – Elevate.

As an early adopter of online medicine, Nitin was the medical director of one of the UK’s largest digital pharmacies for more than a decade and developed one of the country’s first online doctor services.

Nitin co-founded Elevate in 2025 – a first-of-its-kind preventative healthcare membership in the UK, which includes AI-supported body scans and advanced genetic analysis. He also continues to be an active NHS GP practice partner, with a strong reputation for health promotion.