We have the science, the tools, and the evidence to help people live longer healthier lives. So why do our healthcare systems still spend the vast majority of their money treating rather than preventing disease? In this episode, Eliot sits down with Lord James Bethell – former UK Minister for Life Sciences during COVID, Chair of the BARBARA Alliance dementia registry, and one of the most vocal advocates in Britain for shifting healthcare from sickness service to prevention system.

Together, Eliot and James dig into why the diseases killing us today are almost all human-made, what the GLP-1 revolution reveals about a public that has been let down by decades of ineffective interventions, why the UK has ended up privatising prevention while socialising treatment.

A clear, urgent, and refreshingly honest conversation for anyone thinking seriously about the future of health – and about who is going to pay for it.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 – Healthspan vs. lifespan

06:21 – The lateral flow test and the cost of leaving good tech on the shelf

08:43 – Why today's diseases are human-made, not biological

11:29 – The confidence problem: does prevention really work?

13:04 – Multi-morbidity: why fixing one disease is not enough

13:49 – Statins, GLP-1s, and the science of visible efficacy

17:14 – Breaking the convention of symptom-led medicine

19:08 – The bad luck fallacy: how much of chronic disease is modifiable?

21:32 – Giving people agency without moralising about health

24:39 – The economics: why we privatised prevention and socialised acute care

29:07 – Why more hospitals and more nurses is not the answer

FOLLOW LORD JAMES BETHELL:

James Bethell on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jamesbethell/

Listen to James’s Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/prevention-is-the-new-cure/id1673584286

This podcast was produced by Crisis What Crisis Productions

With special thanks to Mintz: life sciences lawyers who help turn scientific breakthroughs into reality. https://www.mintz.com

We have spent a century building an extraordinary system to fix people once they are broken. What would it take to build one that stops them breaking in the first place? In this episode, Eliot sits down with George Tomeski, founder and CEO of Helfie AI – a personal health AI designed to put early detection and prevention into the hands of anyone with a mobile phone.

George is not a doctor and doesn't pretend to be. He came to this through something painful and personal – his mother's stomach cancer, missed for over a decade despite regular visits to a GP. That experience led him to a bigger question: is her story actually rare, or is it the quiet norm across every healthcare system in the world?

Together, Eliot and George explore the difference between healthcare and health, why every system on the planet – free or paid – shares the same structural flaw of engaging only after breakdown, and what becomes possible when a selfie, a cough, or a photograph can be turned into meaningful clinical signal.

CHAPTERS:

07:16 – The structural flaw in every healthcare system

10:10 – Redefining health: detection, prevention, optimisation

13:52 – Why the time is now: sensors, AI, and mobile phones

15:01 – Human health data as the world's largest data category

17:59 – Reaching the four billion people without access to a doctor

20:41 – Compute-at-sense: the economics of accessibility

21:35 – Inside the Helfie platform: what a selfie can actually detect

24:02 – Cardiovascular, respiratory, STIs and cognitive decline

25:13 – Photoplethysmography and the science of a phone camera

28:23 – Validation, accuracy, and regulatory approval

30:00 – Why deviation from baseline matters more than any single reading

32:03 – Precision medicine, finally made real

34:37 – The behaviour problem: knowing vs. doing

37:28 – 6G towers, ambient sensing, and the future of health infrastructure

38:44 – Cholera pumps, seatbelts, and the plumbing of human health

FOLLOW GEORGE:

George Tomeski: www.linkedin.com/in/gtvs/

Healfie AI: www.helfie.ai/

This podcast was produced by Crisis What Crisis ProductionsWith special thanks to Mintz: life sciences lawyers who help turn scientific breakthroughs into reality. https://www.mintz.com