Longevity Clinics Test the Limits of Preventive Medicine and Consumer Demand

The modern search for the Fountain of Youth has found a new address: hospital longevity clinics, where customers can pay thousands of dollars for fitness tests, scans and tailored health advice. The appeal is understandable. The harder question is whether the tests improve health enough to justify their costs and the possibility of follow-up procedures prompted by findings that might never have caused harm.

The business is moving into established medical centers. Northwestern Medicine opened its longevity clinic in July 2025, followed by programs at Weill Cornell and the Mayo Clinic. Northwestern’s annual package costs $5,500. Weill Cornell lists two tiers, at $12,000 and $7,500. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, bills through insurance, leaving out-of-pocket costs dependent on coverage. Its Jacksonville, Florida, clinic charges $45,000 a year.

Those prices buy a broad assessment and time with clinicians, not a promise of extra years. The distinction matters: the most attractive feature may be the attention customers receive, while the clinical value of some tests remains uncertain.

Testing fitness, aging and cognition

A STAT News account by Sarah Todd describes a Northwestern visit that ended with a VO2 Max test. The assessment measures how efficiently the body uses oxygen and is considered the most accurate measure of cardiorespiratory fitness. Todd walked briskly on a steep treadmill while wearing a breathing mask, with the goal of pushing her exertion to the highest level on a scale from one to ten. The test was one part of a larger battery in the clinic’s $5,500 package.

Other assessments included a DEXA scan to measure visceral fat, muscle mass and bone density, and an electrocardiogram to check the heart. Staff compared pulses from the aorta and femoral artery to assess arterial stiffness. Todd also completed parts of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which is designed to detect early signs of dementia, and an olfactory test intended to assess whether aging may be accelerating.

The clinic also offered a way to compare biological age with chronological age. Whether biological age is a useful, settled measure is a separate question; the account sets that debate aside. A collection of measurements can give customers a detailed snapshot, but the snapshot alone doesn’t establish that acting on every result will improve health or extend life.

Todd describes a notably comfortable experience. That customer service helps explain the market: people want clinicians to listen, discuss practical barriers to exercise, sleep and diet, and offer advice suited to their circumstances. Such conversations should be part of ordinary care, though time pressures often make them hard to provide. Similar promises appear in functional medicine practices, where patients pay directly for extended consultations. The basic value being sold is personalized attention, even when the underlying health advice is familiar.

More testing can mean more uncertainty

Medical tests can be useful when there is a clear reason to order them. Broad testing of people without symptoms raises a different issue: incidental findings. Medical experts cited by Todd estimate that such findings appear in 15%-30% of diagnostic imaging. A scan may reveal a mass, aneurysm or other abnormality unrelated to the original reason for testing.

Those results can lead to expensive, invasive follow-up, including biopsies, without necessarily improving a person’s lifespan. Matthew Davenport, a radiologist at Michigan Medicine and co-author of a JAMA viewpoint criticizing the practice, cautions that finding a condition does not by itself show that the person’s life has improved.

Screening’s value depends on the condition and the evidence for intervention. Early detection can matter for some cancers, including breast and colon cancer. For other cases, such as low-risk, early-stage prostate cancer, experts debate whether earlier diagnosis helps people live longer. The potential for unnecessary follow-up is one cost; treatment of conditions that would not have become harmful is another.

The same concerns apply to early-cancer blood tests offered at Weill Cornell and Mayo. Grail sells a test for $1,000. Critics point to the chance of costly biopsies and endoscopies after uncertain results, as well as the possibility that a test may miss a cancer and leave a customer falsely reassured. More detection is not automatically better care; a test’s value depends on what it can reliably find and whether the result leads to an intervention that helps.

Why hospitals are entering the market

Consumer demand is part of the draw. UBS estimated the longevity industry’s annual sales at $5.3 trillion in 2023 and projected that global annual sales could reach $8 trillion by the end of 2030. The projection makes paid clinics an appealing business prospect for hospitals, especially when customers cover the cost themselves.

Vikas Saini, a cardiologist and president of the Lown Institute, argues that even trusted medical centers can be affected by trends, headlines and financial incentives. His concern is that enthusiasm for whole-body imaging and other expansive screening can weaken the discipline of evidence-based care. A respected institution’s name may lend a service credibility, but it doesn’t answer whether a test is appropriate for a particular person.

The career history of Mayo Jacksonville program director Pamila Brar also connects longevity care with commercial preventive-health ventures. Before joining Mayo in February 2025, she worked at Human Longevity (HLI) in San Diego, where she joined in 2015 as founding medical director. Her Mayo biography says she oversaw development of a preventive-health platform and membership model, and served as a research protocol’s principal investigator. She also held a role at the J. Craig Venter Institute, ran a concierge medicine practice in La Jolla, and led the American Academy of Private Physicians.

Brar has described Mayo Jacksonville’s approach as more “evidence-informed” than “evidence-based.” The distinction deserves scrutiny. Medical judgment inevitably uses evidence alongside clinical experience, but a service marketed around precise measurements should be clear about what its tests establish, what remains uncertain and how results will change care.

Prevention, access and the limits of control

Longevity clinics do point toward a sound principle: preventing illness is often better than treating it after it develops. But customers paying thousands for extended assessments are only one part of preventive care. Access to routine help with exercise, nutrition, sleep and follow-up matters too. Affluent people already live longer on average than people with fewer resources; a premium service could widen that divide if its benefits prove real and remain available mainly to those who can pay.

Nor can a carefully measured routine control every health outcome. Bryan Johnson, the technology entrepreneur whose quest to extend life has become a business and public persona, recently disclosed autoimmune gastritis. The condition damages the stomach lining, has no known cause and lacks an effective treatment. It can raise the risk of vitamin B12 deficiency and stomach cancer. The case is a reminder that intensive monitoring and lifestyle changes can’t eliminate uncertainty or prevent every illness.

For now, the strongest case for longevity care rests on established habits and sustained access to good medical advice, while the added value of some premium tests remains open to question. Customers should be able to see what each assessment measures, what evidence supports its use and what follow-up might result. The promise of a longer life is compelling; the practical test is whether these programs improve health beyond what accessible, evidence-based preventive care can provide.

Notes

[1] A discussion of The Future Loves You: How and Why We Should Abolish Death by Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston considers a more extreme version of the longevity project.

[2] Biological age raises scientific and philosophical questions about how aging should be measured.

[3] Brar is a ninth author on a 2026 PubMed paper, available online before publication, about biological markers of aging across the menopause transition. The article’s account questions whether results from the HLI research protocol described in her Mayo biography have been published.