Equitable Health: Reimagining Access for All

The wealthier you are, the healthier you live. That’s the uncomfortable truth at the heart of modern healthcare.

In the UK, the poorest 20% of people hold just 0.5% of total national wealth (ONS, 2025). They’re also three times more likely to experience chronic illness before the age of 50. Meanwhile, the richest 20% receive 36% of disposable income and hold 43% of all wealth, giving them access to faster diagnostics, better nutrition, and private health systems that now feel almost inevitable.

If you can pay, you wait less. If you can’t, you wait longer, often until it’s too late.

That divide is widening, not closing.

And with the rise of AI-driven medicine and longevity technology, we risk creating a world where healthspan itself becomes a luxury good.

AI, Longevity and the New Class Divide

AI is accelerating progress in ways that once seemed impossible. We can now sequence a genome in hours, use predictive analytics to detect disease early, and simulate patient outcomes before treatment even begins (Lancet Digital Health, 2025).

But innovation without access is privilege. The latest breakthroughs across precision diagnostics, longevity clinics, data-driven care are overwhelmingly reaching the top income brackets first.

We’re digitising healthcare faster than we’re democratising it.

And if we’re not careful, the future of medicine will be defined by exclusion rather than evolution.

A Founder’s Perspective

When my dad passed from a preventable illness, I made a promise: to help build systems that prioritise prevention and access over profit and prestige. That commitment has guided every venture I’ve led and every boardroom I’ve sat in.

Working inside the system, from scaling HealthTech ventures to contributing to the Henry Royce Institute’s Investment Committee, I’ve seen the tension up close: innovation racing ahead while regulation and inclusion struggle to keep pace.

The solution isn’t to slow progress. It’s to redesign it.

Reimagining Fairness as Strategy

Equity isn’t charity. When healthcare systems treat access as a moral add-on instead of a design principle, inequality compounds.

But we could change that:

• By embedding social access clauses into innovation funding, ensuring that every AI or biotech grant contributes to public good as well as profit.
• By incentivising preventative ROI, where investors and policymakers measure success by healthy years created, not just revenue generated.
• By redesigning partnership models so public and private collaboration scales affordability, not just pilots.

This isn’t idealism. It’s design thinking.

Because equitable healthcare strengthens economies, reduces absenteeism, improves productivity, and builds resilience across entire communities.

A Call to Those Building the Future

If you’re a founder, investor, or policymaker working in this space, the invitation is simple: build with inclusion baked in.

Ask who your product will serve, and who it might leave behind. Design for the edges, not just the centre. And remember that the real innovation isn’t in what we build, but who it reaches.

Healthcare is humanity’s most powerful equaliser. Let’s not turn it into its greatest divider.

Closing Reflection

We can build AI that predicts disease, personalises care, and extends life. Now we need the courage to build systems that deliver it fairly.

Because healthcare isn’t innovation until it’s accessible; and progress isn’t progress if it’s only for the privileged few.

We have the tools. We have the data. Now we need the will.