ABSTRACT
Although the demographic revolution has produced hundreds of millions people aged 65 and older, a substantial segment of that population is not enjoying the benefits of extended healthspan. Many live with multiple chronic conditions and disabilities that erode the quality of life. The consequences are also costly for society. In the United States, the most costly 5% of Medicare beneficiaries account for approximately 50% of Medicare's expenditures. This perspective summarizes a recent workshop on biomedical approaches to best extend healthspan as way to reduce age-related dysfunction and disability. We further specify the action items necessary to unite health professionals, scientists, and the society to partner around the exciting and palpable opportunities to extend healthspan.
Subject(s)
Aging/physiology , Demography , Geriatrics/trends , Aged , Aging/pathology , Female , Health Promotion , Health Services Needs and Demand , Health Services for the Aged , Humans , Life Expectancy , Longevity , Male , Quality of Life , Translational Research, BiomedicalABSTRACT
Reductionist science produces causal models of small fragments of complicated systems. Causal models of entire systems can be hard to construct because what is known of them is distributed across a vast amount of literature. The Big Mechanism program aims to have machines read the literature and assemble the causal fragments found in individual papers into huge causal models, automatically. The current domain of the program is cell signalling associated with Ras-driven cancers.
