Life 3.0 and Biohacking
Rewriting Human Life in the Digital Age
I. Setting the stage
Healthcare is a rare bird. We can neither disregard it nor make it cheap, simple, and safe (Fernandez et al., 2012). In fact, we globally spend more than 10% of the GDP in healthcare and about $1,000 per capita every year (World Health Organization, 2018). But this is not the whole story: approved drugs halve every 9 years (i.e., Eroom’s Law); population aged over 60 years is expected to grow by 56% over the next ten years (TM Capital, 2017); the workforce to meet patients demand is declining; and the need of having a higher quality of care and more control and transparency over individual healthcare are affecting the sector.
All this is creating the perfect storm for biohacking to emerge as a new healthcare paradigm that could finally provide a solution to the so-called healthcare “iron triangle” (access, affordability, effectiveness).
But there is another major trend that is suggesting that do-it-yourself medicine may be a substantial part of the future healthcare landscape…
