The Buck Institute Launches Healthspan Horizons: A New Initiative to Measure, Understand, and Extend Healthy Life
The Buck Institute for Research on Aging has announced the launch of Healthspan Horizons, a new initiative designed to measure, understand, and extend healthspan—the years of life spent in good health.
While people are experiencing longer lifespans, the duration of healthy life has not increased proportionally. Evidence suggests that aspects of healthy aging are modifiable, but coherent infrastructure for measurement, responsible computation, and collective action has been lacking.
Healthspan Horizons aims to build a new research infrastructure for healthspan, linking multi-modal, real-world data with periodic deep discovery measurements to identify factors driving human healthspan.
Program Objectives and Structure
This platform will link multi-modal, real-world data from individuals' daily activities, such as wearables, sleep, activity, nutrition, and lab results, with periodic deep discovery measurements conducted by the Buck Institute. The goal is to create long-term datasets to identify factors driving human healthspan and use AI to translate these signals into healthspan trajectories and early disease prevention indicators.
Dense longitudinal datasets are considered crucial because they provide more informative data when multiple signals are measured on the same person over time. This data density can facilitate the detection of subtle patterns, aid in understanding resilience, and help identify early divergences from healthy aging before the onset of severe disease.
The initiative will support participation through partner programs and Buck-led studies. Individuals, wellness companies, and health systems can contribute longitudinal data under defined permissions and ethical governance. Participants will gain access to insights derived from responsibly linked diverse data streams, which can help validate effective interventions, identify early signs of decline, and benchmark outcomes across populations. The platform intends to translate these discoveries into guidance for maintaining resilience, energy, strength, and independence.
Responsible AI, grounded in the Buck Institute's biology of aging research, is intended to integrate complex, multi-modal signals into interpretable healthspan trajectories. This requires connecting relevant data at scale.
Federated and Privacy-Preserving Model
Healthspan Horizons employs a federated, privacy-preserving model. This approach allows partners to collaborate and learn together while retaining data stewardship. Approved analyses can run across partner environments without requiring ownership or commercialization of individuals' health data.
Eric Verdin, President and CEO of the Buck Institute, stated that "extending healthy life is achievable and requires infrastructure to organize and apply knowledge responsibly."
Nathan Price, PhD, Professor at the Buck Institute and Co-Founder of Healthspan Horizons, noted "the absence of a method to integrate deep, long-term health data with AI for understanding healthy aging responsibly and at scale."
Collaborative Platform
Healthspan Horizons is designed as an open, federated platform that integrates biological data, longitudinal outcomes, and real-world context. By aligning fragmented data ecosystems through shared standards, interpretable intelligence, and ethical governance, the initiative aims to establish healthspan as a practical and trusted metric across research, care delivery, and policy.
The platform encourages participation from various stakeholders:
- Researchers: Invited to contribute methods, validation, and discovery.
- Clinicians and Health Systems: Can collaborate on translating data into healthspan trajectories for prevention and early intervention.
- Payers and Employers: Can explore new value models based on functional years gained.
- Individuals: Invited to participate as informed partners, retaining data agency while benefiting from insights.
- Donors and Public Partners: Encouraged to support the shared infrastructure.
The initiative focuses on defining and validating shared healthspan measures, converting multi-modal longitudinal data into computable trajectories and early-warning signals for research and prevention.
Leadership and Advisory
Healthspan Horizons is led by Nathan Price, PhD, and Yi Sherry Zhang, PhD, from the Buck Institute. An advisory group comprising leaders in academic medicine, systems biology, precision health, and public health supports the initiative. Advisors include Larry Brilliant, Joel Dudley, Kara Fitzgerald, Lee Hood, Shaista Malik, Sara Szal, and Eric Verdin.
Lee Hood, MD, PhD, stated that "transforming medicine from reactive to predictive requires moving beyond fragmented data silos towards shared, federated intelligence, and Healthspan Horizons contributes to this foundation."
The initiative seeks to ensure healthspan becomes computable, trustworthy, and accessible, grounded in human dignity and collective benefit. Further details are available in the Healthspan Horizons White Paper and on their website.