These days, the word “longevity” is becoming increasingly synonymous with beauty, seen and heard across all categories from skin care to hair care and oral health. However, Fountain Life, a medical center founded by a group of four individuals aspiring to change the trajectory of health care, has focused on the concept for the last five years.

“The focal point of Fountain Life is to extend the health span, not necessarily how long you live, although that’s a byproduct of that, but we want you to be in optimal health up until whatever age that you finally pass. The goal here is not to live your last 10 years in decline,” Dr. William Kapp, cofounder and CEO of Fountain Life, told WWD.

From full body and brain MRIs to advanced cardiac scans, Fountain Life uses early detection technology to do “the deepest dive” on their patients’ health. Now, the company is leveraging the power of AI to help do so. Enter Zori, a new two-face model that promises to improve the patient and clinician experience.

The patients, Chris Hemp — Fountain Life’s chief technology officer — explained, use Zori to communicate and interpret their medical records at a high school level. “They use it to better understand their health, and then that helps seed their conversations with the rest of their care team throughout their year membership [at Fountain Life],” he said.

Clinicians, on the other hand, can use Zori to collate large volumes of data from not just one patient’s medical tests, but over 10,000 members across several years. “The clinicians and care team use our Zori AI to help look at that information year-over-year. So, imagine getting that once, and then we have folks who have renewed with us. You now have a second year of that, and you need to do a differential analysis,” Hemp said. From this, Zori can find key areas clinicians may have easily missed.

Asked how Zori is changing society’s understanding of health and wellness, Dr. Kapp pointed to the overall benefits of advanced technology in early detection. “We know that 80 percent of what we’re treating today is chronic disease, and you don’t start to feel those chronic processes until the late stages,” he explained. “If you want to find these problems while people are feeling ‘healthy,’ you have to use advanced technology.”

An AI model like Zori, specifically, already takes early detection to the next level. Before, clinicians were “drowning” having to contact up to 40 vendors for diagnostic tests and print them, Hemp said. Now, Fountain Life clinicians can be proactive and cut out the middle man; they can record and share data with their patients ahead of time in a straightforward format. More than that, they’re able to ask Zori open-ended questions to predict and put together the best analysis of a member’s health.

“It’s important to understand that Zori is a decision support tool for the clinicians and our members. We want our members to have agency over their data. They should have as much information about their body as their clinicians do,” Dr. Kapp said. “Up until now, your body and all of these tests are really kind of locked behind the door in medicine, and even though you can access it through my chart and some other places like that, you really don’t have an AI agent that helps you interpret that data.”

The future, Hemp continued, is “to be agnostic to the world around medical data,” with Zori functioning as a shared Google Doc between the physician and the member first before transforming into a sidekick with a human-like voice that can answer everyday questions on diet, physical activity, sleep and more.

Dr. Kapp and Hemp assured these functions aren’t meant to replace clinicians. That said, both Fountain Life executives warned about the potential ramifications of refusing to use this kind of technology.

“Our firm belief is that we do not believe AI is going to replace your physicians or your clinicians. However, we do believe your physicians not using AI in the future are probably going to be replaced because they’re not going to be as up to speed as the member is, or as the people that are coming to see them. We’re seeing this now more and more,” Dr. Kapp said.

AI tools have been sweeping the beauty and wellness stratosphere for some time now, and the limits are proving to be boundless. In 2024, a sleep and fitness-tracking ring by Oura took TikTok by storm, with advancements that mimicked the role of a personal trainer.

AI has also made its way to the backend of brands, streamlining business operations and driving beauty formulations. Alex Wiltschko — head of AI-powered fragrance house Generation by Osmo — previously spoke to WWD about how “olfactive intelligence” has played a role in its mission to “digitize scent” by “building fragrances from the molecule up.”

“We use AI to screen through billions of possible molecules that have never been made before and to digitally ‘sniff’ them — or, predict the smell of these molecules. From there, we can make a very small number of them — we’re still just humans, with hands, who can’t do everything — test them for what they smell like and for their safety, and turn the best ones into product,” Wiltschko said.