Why I refuse to accept "80s Medicine" anymore, and why AI is the only way to close the 15-year gap between research and your doctor's office.
I still remember a vivid moment from my childhood in the 1970s. I was visiting an aunt in the hospital with my family. The sign on the ward read "Rectum Clinic." Even as a child, I was baffled. A clinic just for that? It seemed absurdly specific. I wondered how you could treat one part of a person without looking at the rest.
Decades later, that memory came back to haunt me. A close friend was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He was treated by "the best specialists." The treatment was deemed a success.
But two years later, we faced a shock. They found a fist-sized tumor in his colon. It had likely been growing there for two years—concurrent with his bladder treatment. But the bladder specialist never looked "around the corner." He was a mechanic fixing a specific part, treating the body like a car where you replace a spark plug and ignore the transmission.
He survived, but he suffered unnecessarily because the system failed to see the whole picture.
We treat the body like a car where you replace a spark plug and ignore the transmission. But the body is a superhighway.
The Human Technology Center
We have the chance now—finally—to stop viewing the body as a mechanical apparatus and start viewing it for what it truly is: a highly developed, systemically ordered, and infinitely complex Technology Center.
When you look at the raw data, the complexity is staggering. No human doctor can keep track of this "superhighway" alone.
- The Superhighway (Blood Vessels): All blood vessels of an adult—from major arteries to tiny capillaries—lined up would span 100,000 kilometers. That is more than 2.5 times the circumference of the Earth.
- The Ultimate Data Center (The Brain): The total length of nerve fibers (axons) in your brain is about 5.8 million kilometers. Inside this network, up to 1,000 trillion synapses fire, processing information at speeds of up to 430 km/h.
- The Unimaginable Library (DNA): The DNA stored in a single human cell, if decoded and written as text, would fill one million book pages. This complete instruction manual exists in every one of your 30 trillion cells.
- The Mega-Army (Immune System): Your body produces over one billion new immune cells daily. Simultaneously, about 20 billion antibodies patrol your system to tag intruders.
Why I Refuse to Accept "Medicine 2.0"
This is a system of 30 trillion cells. Yet, we expect a General Practitioner to manage this complexity. Here is the reality: Every day, roughly 5,000 new medical studies are published worldwide.
Of course, no doctor in the world can read them all. But the good news is: AI can.
The question is, why does the medical establishment resist using this? I experience it again and again. As a medically interested person, I hear about outstanding findings—new connections and conclusions that turn medical principles upside down. But they are simply not applied.
As a patient, I do not have the 10 to 15 years it statistically takes for a scientific finding to reach the exam room. And I certainly don't want to wait until a pharmaceutical company figures out how to exploit it for profit.
The Lie of the "Standard Blood Panel"
Here is a simple example: I go to the doctor, he runs a standard blood count, and says, "All your values are great."
But that tells me nothing. It is a vague, blurry snapshot—1980s medicine. It ignores the complex technological apparatus called "My Body." My body demands precision. It demands deep research to filter out the right application for me. And that application doesn't always have to be a prescription drug. It could be a supplement, a change in my daily routine, or a metabolic adjustment.
Medicine 2.0: Managing vs. Healing
Dr. Annette Bosworth describes our current system as "Medicine 2.0." It is a system that is a master at managing diseases, not curing them.
- 1. The "Mill": Patients are routed through a cycle of refilling prescriptions and suppressing symptoms without actually improving health.
- 2. Symptom Matching: The doctor listens to a symptom and finds the matching drug. High blood pressure? Here is a beta-blocker.
- 3. Ignoring the Root: It acts like a crutch, holding up the architecture of the body but never repairing the underlying chemical imbalance (the "trash") or inflammation.
The Turning Point: AI Has Arrived
We don't have to accept this anymore. While humans cannot read 5,000 studies a day, Artificial Intelligence can. And the data backs this up.
A study recently published in JAMA Network Open tested 50 doctors against ChatGPT-4 on complex cases. The results were shocking:
- Doctors without AI scored 74%.
- Doctors using AI scored 76%.
- ChatGPT diagnosing independently reached 90% accuracy.
(Source: AI Base News)
Who is Building the Future?
So, how do we access this "Medicine 3.0"? A comprehensive analysis of the current landscape reveals two distinct approaches: The "Democratized AI" for daily management (led by Google) and the "Premium Clinics" for deep biological architecture (led by Fountain Life).
1. Google: The Democratization of Health AI
Google is currently building the most sophisticated infrastructure to bring personalized health to the masses. Their approach is not just about counting steps; it is about deploying autonomous agents.
The Personal Health Agent (PHA)
Google's PHA is a research framework utilizing a Multi-Agent Architecture. It doesn't just rely on one AI, but splits the workload into three specialized sub-agents:
- Data Science Agent (DS): Interprets raw time-series data from wearables (HRV, sleep stages) and structured records.
- Domain Expert Agent (DE): Provides medically contextualized reasoning. In benchmark tests, this agent achieved 83.6% accuracy on board-style medical exam questions.
- Health Coach Agent (HC): Focuses on behavioral psychology, using motivational interviewing to guide users toward long-term goals.
Specialized Models: PH-LLM, AMIE & MedGemma
Beyond the agents, Google is deploying specific models for specific tasks:
- PH-LLM (Personal Health LLM): A fine-tuned version of Gemini designed to power the next generation of Fitbit, capable of reasoning over complex sleep and fitness patterns.
- AMIE (Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer): An experimental system designed to combine clinical reasoning with conversational empathy—often outperforming human clinicians in bedside manner simulations.
- MedGemma: An open-source model allowing developers worldwide to build tools for analyzing medical texts and images.
2. The Premium Sector: Fountain Life & The Landscape
While Google builds the software for the masses, a new breed of longevity clinics is building the hardware for early detection. The market leader here is Fountain Life.
Fountain Life: The "Don't Die of Something Stupid" Principle
Fountain Life's mission is simple: shift from reactive to proactive. Their approach is aggressive, leveraging a 6-person care team per member and utilizing "Zori AI" (based on Claude 3.5 Sonnet) to analyze member data.
- AI-Powered Imaging: Full-body and Brain MRIs with AI overlay to detect abnormalities before symptoms arise.
- AI Coronary CT Angiography (CCTA): To detect soft plaque and heart attack risks years in advance.
- Genomics & Microbiome: Utilization of the Grail test (50 cancers from one blood draw) and whole-shotgun sequencing for the gut.
The Competitor Landscape
The sector is rapidly diversifying:
- Human Longevity Inc. (HLI): Founded by Craig Venter. Known for their "100+ Longevity Care" and a bold $1 Million Cancer Prevention Pledge, focusing heavily on genomic sequencing.
- Prenuvo: Specialized in radiation-free whole-body MRI. Their scans capture over one billion data points across 33 organs, focusing purely on anatomical screening without contrast dyes.
- Q Bio: Creators of the "Digital Twin" platform and the Mark I scanner—a revolutionary device that scans the whole body in 15 minutes, standing or lying down, without radiation.
- Function Health: The accessible challenger ($499/year). Co-founded by Dr. Mark Hyman, they democratize access to 100+ lab tests and recently acquired Ezra to integrate AI-powered MRI screening into a mass-market offering.
Summary Comparison
| Organization | Primary Focus | Key Technology | Access Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Health | Daily Management & Coaching | PHA Agents, AMIE, Fitbit | Mass Market / Research |
| Fountain Life | Proactive Disease Detection | AI-MRI, Zori AI, CCTA | Premium ($3k-$21k) |
| Prenuvo | Cancer/Anatomy Screening | Deep MRI (33 organs) | ~$2,500 / Scan |
| Q Bio | Digital Twin Creation | Mark I Scanner (15 min) | ~$3,500 / Exam |
| Function Health | Deep Biomarker Data | 100+ Labs + Ezra MRI | ~$499 / Year |
Conclusion: The End of Waiting
My friend survived his ordeal, but we shouldn't rely on luck. The information was likely there—in his blood, in his inflammation markers, in the subtle signals his "Tech Center" was sending out. But the "Standard of Care" wasn't listening.
We now have the technology to listen. We have Google's agents to monitor our daily vitals and Fountain Life's scanners to see inside the machine. The 5,000 daily studies are no longer a burden; they are the fuel for a new engine of precision care.
It is time we stopped accepting "normal" and started demanding precision.