Abu Dhabi Longevity Chief Concedes There Is No Evidence the Medicine Extends Life

"I'm being honest with you. I would say to you there's no evidence," Dr Rory Melville of the Institute for Healthier Living Abu Dhabi (IHLAD) told Health Policy Watch. The outlet reported from the Abu Dhabi Future Health Summit, a three-day event held in October. Melville said that showing the medicine extends life would mean waiting decades for patients to reach the end of their lives.

The gap matters because Abu Dhabi is putting the state behind a commercial market. The Department of Health (DoH) licensed IHLAD in November 2024 as what it called the world's first specialised Healthy Longevity Medicine Centre. Its Healthy Longevity Medicine Clinic Standard has been in force since April 2025. Government apps now give residents a "health age" score. Health Policy Watch's investigation suggests the emirate could end up as a model for evidence-based policy on ageing, or as an officially licensed version of a market that one prominent researcher has called a "wild, wild West".

Rules Written by a Small Circle

The standard is cautious in places. According to the report, it treats epigenetic and protein-based "biological age" clocks as optional tools that need more validation. Doctors may repurpose drugs for longevity only if those drugs have positive results from randomised controlled trials in humans. The outlet also found that a small group wrote the standard: DoH, IHLAD and the Healthy Longevity Medicine Society. IHLAD's chief executive, Dr Nicole Sirotin, sits on the society's council. Melville said there are no global standards yet, and he called the reviewers "as independent as you're going to get" for such a young field. Health Policy Watch said it could find no published prices for IHLAD's services, in a country where nearly 90% of residents are non-citizens.

Rings, Scores and Health Data

Wearable makers were prominent at the summit. On 13 October the Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre signed a two-year agreement with Ultrahuman. The company will build a "biological health age" model from medical tests and data from its devices. DoH already shows a health age score in its Sahatna app, which is also available through the TAMM government platform, and it links wearable data to patient records through the Malaffi health information exchange. Ultrahuman founder Mohit Kumar said the score is open to any resident, including migrant workers. He also conceded that doctors could tell patients what the model shows, and said the device's advantage is that it measures continuously. Dr Russell Bowler of Cleveland Clinic said a wearable ageing clock does not measure age in a literal sense.

Oura and DoH have started a two-year study called Project Cradle at Corniche Hospital and Mediclinic Airport Road. It is testing whether a ring worn during pregnancy can warn of premature labour. WHOOP expanded its research agreement with DoH the same week. Founder Will Ahmed said Gulf membership grew by more than 85% in a year, after Mubadala invested $75 million in the company in May. Oura and Ultrahuman are also fighting over patents: during the summit week, Oura filed new claims against the Ultrahuman Ring Pro. A DoH white paper asks what consent model should govern wearable data but does not answer the question.

AI Drugs Still Short of Approval

Insilico Medicine, whose software designed ISM9528, a non-opioid painkiller, showed animal results in which an injectable form matched or sometimes beat morphine. The drug has not yet been given to any human. Co-founder and president Alex Aliper said Insilico's AI methods have cut the time to find a drug candidate from 18 months for its first to about 13 on average, and that the company now nominates about one candidate a month. Its lead drug, rentosertib for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, began a 52-week phase III trial in September. The trial plans to enrol 320 patients at 47 centres, all in China. As of October, no AI-discovered drug had won full approval from the US Food and Drug Administration.

Melville said IHLAD's research arm is now trying to work out which tests are worth doing and whether they are value for money. "I think there's a lot of promise," he said, but "we just need to wait and see whether that comes to fruition."