Naples med center using tech to help people live longer

Reporter: Amy Oshier
Published: Updated:

Advances in medicine are helping people live longer, and experts in the field of longevity believe there is still room to enjoy more quality years.

Fountain Life in Naples is a wellspring of health. It’s gathered the latest in medical tech under one roof.

“With one simple premise, that was to move healthcare from reactive to proactive,” said founder Dr. William Kapp.

This center is a prototype. It uses cutting-edge tools to detect even the tiniest precursor of disease, such as comprehensively examining someone’s brain.

“We do a full body and brain MRI with artificial intelligence overlays. So we’ll be able to tell them every facet of their brain health in terms of do they have an aneurysm? Do they not have an aneurysm?” Dr. Kapp said. “But more importantly, what are the areas of their brain that are involved with Alzheimer’s where their brains and parts of their brain they’re involved with Parkinson’s disease? What is the overall health of their brain? What’s the volume of their brain?”

The same deep dives are being used to look for heart disease, cancer and chronic conditions. The big difference is looking when there are no symptoms. Years of testing thousands of people found a lot of them were harboring serious health issues.

“It turns out 2% of people have cancer that they’re unaware of, 2 1/2 percent of people have aneurysms that they’re unaware of. We have about 14% of people that have an actionable finding that needs to be addressed relatively urgently,” Dr. Kapp said. “And we have about 17% of people with fatty liver disease, which is now the number one cause of liver transplant in the U.S. But more importantly, about 40% of people have cardiac disease and are unaware of that.”

All this takes a toll, even shortening life. This is where medtech makes a difference.

“Ultimately, we’re a longevity company. We want to know not only how do we keep you living longer, but then help you intersect the technology that will be coming in the next 10 to 20 years.”

As the field grows, so will years of quality life.

Some leading longevity experts think we’ll be able to reach the age of 98 in good health if more emphasis is put on proactive screening.

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