Investing in the future of health: Singapore’s growing longevity sector

SINGAPORE – At 72, Ivan Low boasts a grip strength of 47kg, a physical milestone that outperforms many men decades younger.

But when he first joined Alexandra Hospital’s (AH) one-year healthy longevity programme at age 71, the home gym enthusiast was surprised to learn that lifting weights wasn’t enough to safeguard his health.

Low then added spinning, or indoor cycling, to his exercise routine. A food lover, he also started to watch his diet more closely. He now eats more vegetables and fruits, and has cut down on desserts and snacking on potato chips in front of the TV. 

Having entered the trial at 71 with a biological age of 67, Low managed to shaved off another two years to reach 65 by the time his chronological age hit 72.

Biological age looks at how much damage has happened to the body’s cells over the years. This damage occurs naturally with age, and is affected by a person’s genes, habits and physical environment.

More than chronological age, biological age reflects a person’s overall health and potential longevity, with an older biological age linked to earlier development of chronic diseases from dementia to diabetes.

Low’s experience reflects a paradigm shift anchored by AH’s clinical trials: healthy longevity medicine grounded in geroscience – the interdisciplinary field that studies the biological mechanisms of ageing. This emerging discipline treats ageing as a manageable condition. 

Clinicians aim to delay age-related decline by using advanced diagnostics such as biological age monitoring, microbiome analysis – which evaluates the gut’s microorganisms to assess metabolic health, immunity, and inflammation; functional measures such as cardiorespiratory fitness tests, and more. This is coupled with personalised lifestyle interventions such as targeted exercise regimes.

Private healthcare players enter longevity space

What began as a public research initiative at AH, which opened its clinic in 2023, has expanded into a broader healthcare boom across Singapore. 

Driven by the nation’s shift from sick care to preventive care and backed by rising affluence, private healthcare groups and commercial players are racing to offer biological age testing, precision diagnostics, and personalised lifestyle interventions.

In early 2026, Raffles Medical Group, for one, launched a healthy longevity clinic, led by a resident family physician, and supported by a psychologist and a Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) physician.

In July, IHH Healthcare introduced Healthspan, offering biological age testing across its Parkway Shenton clinics and advanced longevity evaluations at its executive screening centres.

Other non-medical players also entered the fray. Morrow Medical, part of wellness venture Morrow, founded by entrepreneur Allen Law opened officially in August, offering preventative screenings, while premium fitness outfit Tsquared Lab opened a longevity clinic Tsquared Health at the start of the year. 

Some existing GP clinics have also started to offer biological age testing and longevity programmes on top of their traditional offerings.

For some Singaporeans, the appeal of such testing lies in knowing themselves better, inside and out. Lee Siu Yin, 73, a senior nurse mentor at AH who already exercised regularly and ate well, paid for the hospital’s longevity programme to see if her efforts were paying off.

“I would rather have quality of life than to live longer (in poor health),” Lee said. “I wanted to know: Am I ageing faster or slower?”

How longevity testing works

Unlike standard screening tests like mammograms and stool tests which are done to exclude diseases, longevity diagnostics focus on biological ageing, organ system health, and functional resilience (the body’s ability to withstand, adapt to, and recover from physical stress or illness). Their primary purpose is not to rule out medical conditions but to guide preventive interventions.

The main draw for clients is often biological age testing, which estimates how fast their cells and organ systems are ageing compared with their calendar (chronological) age.

IHH Healthcare offers AgeQ, an advanced test developed by precision health company Lucence alongside the National University of Singapore (NUS) and A*STAR.

With it, researchers have condensed a massive library of ageing data into a streamlined panel of seven key blood biomarkers, which gives clients a fast, affordable, and easy-to-understand lifestyle score. This makes it popular with GP clinics.

The seven blood biomarkers measure core body functions, including inflammation, metabolic health, kidney and liver health and lipid profiles, to estimate how fast you’re ageing, without needing a long list of tests.

Raffles Medical Group, meanwhile, targets clients looking for a deep-dive data audit. They utilise a test built on the LinAge2 biological age clock from NUS researchers, which analyses 60 parameters, including blood and urine tests, physical measurements and questionnaire data to highlight body systems which are at risk of ageing faster than expected.

This guides the physician on the next step, be it advanced assessments or personalised lifestyle interventions.

Not all clinics offer biological age testing. Indeed, there is no standard way of measuring it yet.

Depending on budget and which clinic you go to, longevity packages may include advanced metabolic evaluations, physical function tests such as the V02 max and the Dexa scan to assess bone strength, genomic testing or cognitive screening and more, to build a more detailed health profile.

Assessments like the HOMA-IR test can detect early insulin resistance before blood sugar levels rise while VO2 max testing evaluates your body’s capacity to deliver and utilise oxygen during high-intensity effort and is a key metric given that higher aerobic fitness directly predicts a longer lifespan.

Similarly, the Dexa scan, which assesses bone density and body composition, helps to identify hidden visceral fat and conditions like early bone loss or osteoporosis.

Longevity screening can cost around $108 for an AgeQ test, or as much as $20,000 or more for comprehensive evaluations.

Going beyond the hype

As commercial interest grows, so does the hype. Although certain dedicated wellness centres and longevity clinics offer non-medical interventions, such as infrared light and hyperbaric oxygen therapies – which claim to slow or reverse cellular ageing, experts said that using them for anti-ageing purposes lacks robust proof.

Beyond unproven therapies, doctors also said that supplements should be used only when there is a deficiency. Dr Samuel Choudhury from Raffles Medical Group said he regularly sees patients blindly taking 10 to 20 supplements at a time.

“We counsel them to stop taking these supplements because they are either unnecessary, not evidence-based, or leading to over-supplementation,” he said.

“If you don’t sleep well, you don’t exercise and you drink and smoke, taking supplements will not offset the damage.”

At AH, clinicians emphasised that basic, sustainable habits matter more than biological age scores or quick fixes. The path to longevity, they stressed, is nothing glamorous.

“While biological age is nice to know, it is not the sole predictor of mortality or morbidity,” said Dr Grace Chiang, a family medicine consultant at AH’s Healthy Longevity Research Clinic.

“In terms of healthspan, the four big pillars are really exercise, nutrition, and then, psychosocial factors, in terms of your sleep and your stress. The fourth one would be optimising your known medical conditions.

“We hear this from a young age, but implementing it is a different story and we are here to help with this.”

Exercise guidelines, for example, require precise balance. Chiang said that the ideal regime should be 50 per cent cardio, of which 80 per cent can be of low to moderate intensity and 20 per cent of a high intensity. The remaining 50 per cent should consist of strength and resistance training.

However, these baseline guidelines must be tailored to each patient’s specific health profile. “Let’s say they have joint pain, or they have a frozen shoulder, you can’t tell them to just go and lift more weights,” said Chiang.

Low learnt this first-hand when he consulted with Chiang.

“I neglected cardio (previously) because I thought strength training was enough, until the exercise physiologist told me, ‘If you want to retain your waistline, you must do cardio’.” 

Lifestyle changes are key to healthy ageing

AH’s Healthy Longevity Research Clinic’s year-long programme comes under the Health Enhancing Active Living (HEAL) study, which is looking at whether tailored interventions can improve healthspan. 

Based on participants who have successfully completed the one-year programme, improvements have been seen in biomarkers, fitness and biological age, said clinic head Laureen Wang.

For avid recreational cyclist Wu D.C., 64, early testing served as a crucial wake-up call.

Although he joined the trial thinking he was fairly fit, advanced assessments revealed high cholesterol and arterial stiffness, which can contribute to heart disease.

By swopping curry puffs and pastries for tuna sandwiches, starting statin medication, and adding targeted strength training, Wu brought his cholesterol to a healthy level, reduced his arterial stiffness, and regained the mobility to climb stairs effortlessly. This kept his biological age eight months below his calendar age.

“If you have good health and good mobility, that’s what matters,” Wu said.

Lee turned 73 when she finished the programme in March 2026, but biologically, she shaved a year off her already stellar biological age of 65.7 the previous year, decreasing it further to 64.7 years. She improved her bad cholesterol and blood pressure readings at the end of the programme.

Chiang said her most successful patient was one who went from unhealthy habits to someone who became disciplined in exercising, eating and sleeping well.

“He realised that there was no quick fix or magic pill; rather, ageing well depends on behaviour change and sustainable habits.”

Wang said: “More importantly, for now, our participants have reported higher energy, better sleep, and improved fitness. These short-term changes and feelings are very important to sustain their behaviour.” 

For Low, his habits paid off in full by the end of his one-year programme. He gained roughly 10 per cent more muscle, cut his body fat by 5 to 6 per cent, kept his cholesterol levels under control with medication, and normalised his blood pressure. He also feels less lethargic and sleeps better these days.

He widened his biological age gap to about seven years, proving that smart habits don’t just add years to your life, but life to your years.

“I don’t care if I live until 90 – If I’m bedridden at 80, I would rather go. It is more important to have a healthy lifespan, especially mobility, being able to walk and do things independently. That is my prime motivation.”