The Tribune

By CORLE DEVEAUX

President and CEO,REMEBER2, Inc (Rm2.ai)

Imagine standing on a railroad track. The day is beautiful. Everything is quiet. You look in both directions and see nothing. You hear no whistle. You feel no vibration beneath your feet. But somewhere in the distance, a train may be coming. Would you want to know? Most of us would answer yes without hesitation. Not because knowing guarantees we can stop the train, and not because every sound in the distance signals danger, but because knowing earlier gives us something incredibly valuable: TIME. Time to pay attention. Time to understand what is happening. Time to make a decision. And, when necessary, time to act.

That simple analogy helps explain why prevention may be one of the most important conversations we can have about health and longevity. For generations, healthcare has largely operated around a familiar pattern: symptoms appear, we realise something is wrong, we seek medical attention, a diagnosis may be made and treatment begins. Preventive medicine asks us to look farther down the track. Rather than focusing exclusively on treating disease after it becomes symptomatic or severe, prevention includes reducing modifiable risks, receiving recommended screenings, identifying certain diseases earlier and appropriately managing conditions that are already present.

But prevention is not simply about avoiding disease. It is also part of a much larger conversation about longevity. When most people think about longevity, they imagine living to 90, 100 or beyond. But perhaps the more important question is not simply, “How long will I live?” It is, “How well will I live?” Most of us do not just want more birthdays. We want to remain active, independent and engaged. We want to travel, work, dance, spend time with our families, enjoy our grandchildren and continue doing the things that give our lives meaning. Longevity should therefore be about more than lifespan. It should also be about health-span living more of our years in good health and without major chronic diseases.

The goal of prevention is not simply to add years to the end of life. It is to create the possibility of adding more healthy life to those years. Now think about the train again.

Prevention gives us opportunities to look farther down that track. A blood pressure check may identify hypertension. Laboratory testing may uncover risk factors. Recommended screenings may identify certain diseases or precancerous changes before symptoms appear. Lifestyle changes may help address modifiable risks, while appropriate medical care can help manage conditions that are already present. Screening cannot prevent every disease, nor does early detection guarantee a particular outcome. But it demonstrates an important principle: sometimes seeing something earlier can change what happens next.

There is another part of the prevention conversation that deserves greater attention: What happens between doctor visits? We may visit a healthcare professional periodically, but our bodies do not stop changing when we leave the doctor’s office. We sleep, work, exercise, travel, experience stress, recover from illness and go about our daily lives. Heart rate, blood pressure, activity, oxygen levels and other physiological measures can fluctuate throughout those thousands of hours between appointments. Historically, much of that period has been relatively invisible. It is almost like being able to look down the railroad track only occasionally and then assuming everything is fine until the next time we look.

Connected health technologies and wearable devices are beginning to offer another window into that period. They can provide additional information about selected health measures outside traditional healthcare encounters. These technologies should not be viewed as automatically preventing disease, predicting every medical event or extending life. Their potential value is more fundamental: greater visibility. Greater visibility can support earlier awareness, and earlier awareness may give someone a reason to pay attention, ask questions or, when appropriate, seek professional medical evaluation.

We already understand this principle in almost every other part of our lives. Our cars have dashboards because we do not want to discover a problem only

after the engine stops. Our homes have smoke detectors because we do not want the first warning of a fire to be flames surrounding us. We monitor hurricanes because having time to prepare is better than discovering a storm when it reaches our front door. None of these systems guarantees that something bad will never happen. They provide information.

Information creates awareness. And awareness gives us the opportunity to respond.

That philosophy is also behind Rm2.ai™ — Predict 2 Prevent™. Rm2.ai is designed to integrate selected information from connected devices and examine changes and trends occurring between traditional healthcare encounters. It does not replace a physician, diagnose disease or guarantee that illness can be prevented. Its purpose is to help make selected health information more visible and support earlier awareness. No technology, screening test, diet, exercise program or preventive strategy can guarantee that any of us will live to 90, 100 or beyond. Longevity is influenced by genetics, environment, healthcare access, socioeconomic circumstances, existing disease, individual behaviour and many other factors. But the scientific evidence supports an important conclusion: many of the factors contributing to premature disease and death are modifiable, and healthier lifestyles and appropriate preventive practices are associated with longer life expectancy and more years lived without major chronic disease.

Perhaps longevity, then, begins much earlier than we think. It begins with the walk we take today. The cigarette we do not smoke. The screening appointment we actually keep. The blood pressure reading we do not ignore. The condition we manage instead of postponing. The change we discuss with a healthcare professional rather than dismissing. And increasingly, it may include using technology to better understand what is happening during the thousands of hours when we are living our lives outside the doctor’s office.

Prevention is not about living in fear or believing that a train is always coming. It is about giving ourselves a better opportunity to see farther down the track. Because if a train really were coming, wouldn’t you want to know before the whistle blows?