In February 2025, a diverse crowd of scientists, investors, policymakers, and visionaries gathered under one roof in Riyadh for the third installment of the Global Healthspan Summit (GHS). Hosted by the Hevolution Foundation, this summit has rapidly grown into the world’s largest conference dedicated to longevity science—not just in length of life, but in the quality of those years lived.
What emerged wasn’t just a flurry of data and dazzling new technologies. Instead, it was something deeper: a convergence of perspectives that points to a profound cultural shift—from the pursuit of longevity to the preservation of healthspan.
From Longevity to Healthspan: A Strategic Pivot
In his opening address, Dr. Mehmood Khan, CEO of Hevolution, emphasized a deliberate shift in focus. “A discussion in most of this field has been about longevity,” he said. “We at Hevolution don’t like to speak about longevity. Most people don’t want to live longer just for the sake of it—they want to live well.”
This distinction—between lifespan and healthspan—may seem subtle, but it’s foundational. Healthspan refers to the number of years lived in good health, free from disease and disability. And it’s this metric, more than simple longevity, that resonates with the broader public. In fact, Hevolution is about to publish a report showing that one in two physicians is now regularly asked about healthspan or lifespan by their patientsindex (3).
As Dr. Khan put it: “We prefer the term ‘consumer’ over ‘patient.’ Once someone becomes a patient, we’re already too late. Our job is to keep people healthy.”
Building a Movement: Funding and Global Reach
The Hevolution Foundation itself is a newcomer, barely three years old. Yet its impact is outsized. With over $400 million already committed to research and investment—and more on the horizon—it is now the second-largest funder of geroscience in the worldindex (3).
The Foundation’s dual focus is clear:
- Academic Research: Over 250 scientists across 200+ labs are Hevolution grant recipients.
- Longevity Biotech: Though currently funding only four companies, the Foundation promises a wave of upcoming investments designed to catalyze innovation.
Dr. Khan called for bold collaboration: “There is no other business in the world that’s going to affect all 8 billion humans. Let’s build policies, partnerships, and solutions that rise to that challenge.”
Reimagining the Hallmarks of Aging
Dr. Felipe Sierra, Hevolution’s Chief Scientific Officer and a leading voice in geroscience, picked up the baton with a call to rethink aging itself.
“The original Hallmarks of Aging paper gave our field structure,” Sierra noted. “But now, we need to go beyond checklists and molecular snapshots.”
His key message: aging is not defined by a single molecule or pathway, but by the loss of resilience—the body’s ability to respond to stress, bounce back from illness, and maintain internal balance.
Sierra emphasized that this idea is supported by the World Health Organization’s new framework, which no longer defines healthy aging as the mere absence of disease, but as the preservation of intrinsic capacity—the ability to function across physical and mental domainsindex (3).
Resilience as the Core of Longevity
What exactly is resilience in a biological sense?
It’s the ability of your cells and systems to respond to challenges and return to a state of equilibrium—whether the stressor is a cold, chemotherapy, a high-fat diet, or even strenuous exercise.
Sierra stressed that with age, this ability wanes. Eventually, even small disruptions—like the flu or a minor fall—can become catastrophic. Measuring resilience directly, however, is difficult. Sierra suggested that wearable technology and continuous biomarker tracking may hold the key to understanding and enhancing this critical attributeindex (3).
The Software of Life: Bioelectricity and Aging
One of the most intriguing talks came from Dr. Elena Sergeeva, part of Dr. Michael Levin’s lab at Tufts University. She introduced the audience to a radical perspective: aging not as a linear decline, but as a failure in cellular communication and pattern memory.
Her team’s work focuses on bioelectricity—the currents and voltage patterns that help organize and maintain bodily structure from the earliest stages of life. According to Sergeeva, our anatomical blueprint is encoded not just in DNA, but in these dynamic electric fields.
“Aging is when cells can no longer maintain their patterns,” she explained. “Communication becomes noisy, less coordinated. It’s like a choir gradually losing its harmony.”
Levin’s lab is developing bioelectric aging clocks, which track how these patterns degrade over time. They’ve even demonstrated that resetting these patterns in worms can result in regenerative phenomena, like re-growing two-headed organisms—a concept that, while far from human application, hints at powerful regenerative potentialindex (3).
The Health Within: Rethinking Targets for Intervention
Dr. Alan A. Cohen of Columbia University took a philosophical yet data-rich approach in his talk, “Shifting from Aging to Intrinsic Health as a Target.”
Rather than chasing aging as a disease—or trying to quantify every pathway involved—Cohen suggests focusing on what keeps systems functional. He described the human body as a complex, self-optimizing system shaped by evolution. This system drifts with age, not just breaking down, but becoming less coordinated.
“Health,” in Cohen’s words, is this delicate equilibrium—an evolved capacity to adapt, repair, and thrive. When we lose it, all the damage and dysfunction begins to cascade.
Thus, interventions should aim to support the underlying dynamics of health, rather than target each aging biomarker in isolation. It’s a call to treat the forest, not just the treesindex (3).
Healthspan as Global Strategy: What’s Next?
The 2025 Summit made it clear: healthspan is no longer a fringe concept. It is a global movement, fueled by scientific momentum and real-world urgency.
Emerging Priorities:
- Early Intervention: Waiting until someone becomes a patient is outdated. Future longevity care will begin with prevention, not reaction.
- Funding Acceleration: As venture capital funding in geroscience more than doubled in 2024, the appetite for breakthrough therapies is stronger than everindex (3).
- Tech Integration: From wearables that track resilience to bioelectric diagnostics, technology is set to transform how we understand and monitor aging.
- Cross-Sector Collaboration: Scientists, governments, private investors, and consumers must work together to scale solutions that benefit the global population.
Why This Matters to You
For wellness-focused individuals and professionals alike, the takeaways from GHS 2025 are profound:
- Healthspan is actionable: We can take meaningful steps now to extend our years of healthy living—through diet, sleep, movement, mental health, and emerging therapies.
- Resilience is measurable and improvable: Just like cardiovascular fitness, biological resilience can be supported—and eventually tracked—with the right tools.
- Longevity isn’t about living forever: It’s about feeling vibrant longer, remaining independent, and enjoying life on your terms.
Final Reflections: A Movement in Motion
The Global Healthspan Summit 2025 didn’t just report on the latest science—it redefined what it means to age well.
From high-tech laboratories to the rhythms of daily life, the insights shared in Riyadh signal a powerful truth: the future of health is not in treating disease, but in preserving function.We are shifting from a model of decline to one of dynamic stability, from repair to resilience, from lifespan to healthspan. And in that shift lies not just a longer life—but a better one.