Humanity - the world’s first reverse ageing app, has announced a raise of $2.5 million
The ability to slow or even reverse your biological age has become a reality for everyone today as two serial entrepreneurs launch a solution that aims to extend the healthspan of Humanity.
Founders Pete Ward and Michael Geer teamed up over two years ago on a mission to create a world-first - an app that can monitor your biological age and help you slow and even reverse it. This means you now have a tool to enable you to possibly stay healthy and disease free for decades longer.
Humanity, which launches today in the U.K. (4th August 2021) and in the US and worldwide, first week of September; has so far raised $5 million from 65 of the world’s leading health- and consumer-tech investors and founders including Alex Tew and Michael Acton-Smith (Co-Founders of Calm), Taavet Hinrikus (Co-Founder of Wise, founding team of Skype), Robin Thompson (Co-Founder of MyFitnessPal), One Way Ventures, 7Percent, Seedcamp, Breega, Alexander Ljung (CEO and Co-Founder of Soundcloud) and Esther Dyson, following oversubscribed interest.
The founders have also attracted the backing and support of some of the world’s leading scientists onto their Science Advisory Board, including Kristen Fortney, Co-Founder of BioAge, George Church who helped map the Human Genome and a Professor at Harvard Medical School, and Aubrey de Grey, one of the leading lights in the aging science movement and, Chief Science Officer at the SENS Research Foundation, amongst others.
Since launching a beta version of the app last year, Humanity has grown a cult following, with the majority of subscribers taking immediate positive health actions after joining and using it daily or weekly to monitor their aging. Within just a few months, it reached the maximum number of users on TestFlight (Apple’s app testing facility) and has steadily grown a waiting-list of tens of thousands of users.
Michael Geer, Co-Founder of Humanity says “Aging remains the leading cause of disease globally, but few people make the connection between aging and their overall health - and most feel ultimately helpless to tackle it. Being ‘healthy’ is quite a nebulous term as it is completely personal to each individual. Being able to monitor your aging provides a truly holistic indicator of health, which could help reduce your probability of disease and extend the healthy lives of millions.”
In 2020, it was estimated that the Coronavirus pandemic cut life expectancy in England and Wales by one year, but Humanity’s aim is to extend the global healthspan (years of fully functional health life), and inevitably, lifespan would follow.
How it works - A dynamic health navigation system:
Humanity is a navigation app for your health. In much the same way that the Waze traffic app navigates you to your destination faster, the Humanity app compares users’ data with others similar to them, and provides dynamic personalized advice and guidance that encourage more positive actions and ultimately can guide people on the quickest path to better health for longer.
Each positive action increases the users’ Humanity Score (H Score) in the app under one of four key categories - ‘movement’, ‘mind’ ‘recovery’ and ‘nutrition’. The higher the H Score over a sustained period of time, the increased probability that you will see a slowing or reversal in the aging process over time.
The Humanity app connects with sensors in your smartphone and wearable technology to track key biomarkers such as heart rate, step rate, sleep and activity to uniquely calculate each users’ ‘rate of aging’ and ‘biological age’ based on a series of machine learning algorithms that have been validated against real world outcomes from longitudinal biobanks (including the UK Biobank). Humanity combines in-house research and development with collaborations with other great scientists including the teams at Gero and Chronomics, and partnerships with companies like Illumina and Eurofins.
Peter Ward, CEO and Co-Founder of Humanity comments, “For years, fitness trackers and smart watches have monitored our calories and step-count to get us moving and increase our exercise, but until now there has been no way of understanding whether these things were actually making them healthier. Humanity is solving that problem by building a health navigation system for us all. Our mission is to help users understand exactly what actions are working to slow their aging, so they can live a healthier, longer, more resilient life.”
