For the third time, this year Nov.11 -14, I joined up for some of the sessions on the programme that were available virtually. With the 2024 theme “Prevention: The Path to Healthier, Longer Lives” the first panel discussion I attended, titled “Driving the Prevention Society & Economy”, included two people I have heard from on previous online events since 2021 – Cynthia Bullock, UKRI Innovate UK and Lynne Corner, National Innovation Centre for Ageing (NICA).
In this panel, collaboration was the theme on “how government, policymakers, business and investors together with public sector can work together to drive long-term system change to move our broken sick care model to prevention, harnessing the latest developments in longevity science, data regulation and frontier technologies.” Not for the first time over the last few years have I heard of how our so-called health care system is not focused enough on prevention care.
Interestingly during the month of November alone, I attended two other online discussions where the term “broken sick care model” rose to the surface, but in this UK discussion Lynne Corner also addressed the issue of “short-termism” vs. that long term system change in strategy and policy development which so many times has been echoed by others in the health sector domain, in Canada similarly to voices in the UK.
However long it’s been that we have been banging on about all this, even pre-pandemic, progress on the part of government policy seems to be slower than would like to see; which is why the case was made by Bullock and Corner and others on this particular UK panel for heightened public awareness and business engagement in driving a prevention society & economy.
The one initiative mentioned by Cynthia Bullock was the UKRI’s Healthy Ageing Challengea 5-year £98 million investment which ended earlier this year. Simplifying here, it was devised to support businesses, social enterprises and university researchers to develop innovations in healthy ageing products, service and business models to help people “remain active, productive, independent and socially connected across generations for as long as possible”.
My ears perked up when another panelist Pamela Gellatly, Strategic Development Director at HCMLa health and care management company brought up the cost to any organization of workplace absenteeism stemming from one might say is unhealthy ageing, such as inactivity or obesity; and why Social Prescribingserves an important role in a prevention health system.
Reflecting on this panel discussion, the message was rounded off by NICA’s Lynne Corner saying that she was optimistic that the business community can recognize the benefits of addressing the needs of a longevity society by designing products and services with a greater sense of urgency, by picking up the pace and improving their capacity – but how can we continue to reach the small & medium size enterprises and local businesses to see the benefits to their bottom line?
Next week in part two of my recap of Longevity Week I will shed a light on another aspect of the longevity agenda – bioscience technologies, as well as a short summary of a few other sessions including the “Underrepresentation of Older People in Clinical Trials”, a session presented by a special interest group of the British Society of Gerontology.
