At Flagship Pioneering, we constantly challenge ourselves to imagine a different future. Our Preemptive Health and Medicine Initiative asks: what if we could create a world largely free from disease? Our ambition is to help people to live disease free for longer, not only adding years to our lives but life into our years. It is our belief that true health security—the ability to live our lives free from sickness—can and must be achieved for all.
Our healthcare systems are, in fact, sickcare systems. They are focused on diagnosing and treating sickness. This observation is not meant to denigrate their importance; they are essential to the good functioning of a civilized society. But sickcare by its nature focuses on the already-sick rather than on securing the health of those who are healthy. Yet the rising tide of chronic disease—many the result of modern lifestyles—means those systems are under sustained financial pressure. Indeed, our projections find that if healthcare costs in the US grow at the same pace for the next 30 years as they have for the past 30 years, then healthcare will account for 32 per cent of the US economy by 2050.
We believe the extraordinary advances in the biological and computational sciences should make it possible to detect predisease states far earlier, and to preempt disease, so symptoms never manifest. Such an approach has the potential to enable us to live healthier lives for longer, free of sickness—adding life into our years. That means more time for family and friends, for work or study, or to contribute to our communities. From an economic perspective, it means high levels of workforce participation, improved productivity, and reduced healthcare costs. After all, keeping people healthy by preempting disease is the best kind of healthcare cost containment.
