“One thing I would change is to make the industry more consumer-centric: people over profits,” says Gil Blander, Founder & Chief Scientific Officer, Inside Tracker. He found the healthcare industry concentrating on profits more than the health of the people. He says their focus is not on targeted prevention but remediation of consequences. Instead of treating the root cause, they treat the symptoms. According to him, “this current ‘sick care’ industry is like a hotel and gym –– trying to fill hospital beds and use diagnostic machines for profit, instead of working to keep people away from those places and things”.

As a child, Gil witnessed the death of a relative due to lack of preventive healthcare, and this resulted in his lifelong commitment to bring a change to this scenario. Being passionate about personalized nutrition, longevity research, and artificial intelligence, he tried to integrate these and provide a solution. Thus, he came up with the concept of InsideTracker as a personalized wellness application. The main motive of InsideTracker is to help people live better, for longer. . InsideTracker works by optimizing each individual body based on its own biometric data. The cutting-edge algorithmic engine analyses a person’s blood samples, DNA, and lifestyle habits, and guides them towards whole-body optimization by providing actionable recommendations.

Gil worked alongside some of the world leaders in aging research, like MIT biologist Dr. Leonard Guarente and Harvard geneticist Dr. David Sinclair, to generate the prototype for an automated, algorithm-based personalized nutrition and lifestyle platform. Regarding the guiding concept behind InsideTracker, Gil says it’s about “combining rigorous, peer-reviewed science with cutting edge technology and the creative power of great human minds––which can result in phenomenal advances for human health”.

Innovation – the key for future 

Gil has a Ph.D. from one of the top labs at the world-renowned the Weitzmann Institute. He did his postdoc at MIT in aging science. Early on, he could see through the shortcomings in the current industry very clearly. He believes healthcare needs to become innovative and work on prevention over treatment. The focus, he explains, should be on how to make the person healthier even before they ever get sick. This can be achieved only when scientists, engineers, and physicians put human beings at the center of their research rather than the financials. Gil says this shift has started with platforms like InsideTracker, but there is still a long road to tread.