AI, Healthcare, and Longevity: Practical Implications for Mathematicians

Author: Martin Gattung, Founder and Managing Director – Aeiforia GmbH

Introduction

Longevity is no longer an abstract topic for the future. Medical advances and AI-supported diagnostics are already changing healthcare today. For actuaries, this means that mortality tables and classic trend assumptions are reaching their limits. Instead, individual, data-driven forecasts are gaining in importance, which can then have a direct impact on risk models, provisions, and product design.

From Mortality Tables to Dynamic Forecasts

Traditional models could continue to ensure stability and comparability in the future. At the same time, AI-based methods — such as “aging clocks” — could provide additional information by taking biological markers, genetic data, or imaging findings into account. This would enable healthcare providers to develop more differentiated assessments of longevity in the long term and make their assumptions more dynamic.

Insights from Research and Impressions from my Trip to New York

During my trip to New York, I had the opportunity to speak with doctors and scientists such as Dr. Mobbs. He described how ketogenic diets and calorie restriction approaches were able to reverse age-related diseases in animal studies.
Particularly exciting for mathematicians: if these effects are clinically confirmed, life expectancy could be extended by decades. Scenario analyses could then be used to map these leaps. At the same time, AI is being used in his projects for drug development.
This combination of basic research and AI illustrates that in the future, we must understand longevity not only as a risk, but also as a calculable variable.

The following practical effects are already evident in healthcare provided by AI:

Early detection: AI-supported MRI analyses can identify neurodegenerative processes years before symptoms appear.
Prevention: Apps combine vital data and suggest individual health programs that have the potential to extend working life.
New therapies: Generative models accelerate the search for molecules that slow down or reverse aging processes.

For insurers, this could mean fewer cases of long-term care, but at the same time growing obligations due to longer pension periods. Although a longer healthy lifespan could extend the active phase of life, it could also be associated with rising medication and therapy costs. It is not yet possible to predict with certainty which effects will prevail, which is why these developments need to be closely monitored and regularly reassessed.

The actuview Partners Roundtable on October 1 Offers an Opportunity to Deepen the Discussion

These very issues will be addressed at the actuview Partners Roundtable 2025, which I will have the privilege of moderating. Under the title “Longevity Rethought – How Medical Progress and AI are Changing Life and Health Insurance,” experts from various fields will discuss whether medical breakthroughs are making longevity more predictable, what role AI could play in prevention and therapy, how unequal access to technologies is likely to influence risk assessment, and whether the longevity risk of the past could even give rise to opportunities for innovative products in the future.

Register here for the actuview Partners Roundtable

Mathematical Questions

For mathematicians, this could lead to the following areas of work in particular:

How could classic mortality tables be combined with dynamic, AI-based forecasts?
What scenarios would be conceivable if medical innovations were to dramatically change life expectancy?
How could bias and unequal access be addressed in order to develop fair and robust models?
What role could Monte Carlo simulations or stochastic projections play in adequately accounting for uncertainties?

Conclusion

In the future, longevity could be shaped more strongly by technological and medical innovations than we are used to today. For actuarial practice, this would mean that models would not only have to extrapolate historical developments, but also anticipate possible leaps in research and care. The roundtable on October 1 could be an important forum for exploring these issues in depth in an international exchange. My discussions in New York have shown that developments are emerging here that could have a lasting impact on our work.