From lifespan to healthspan: how longevity is reshaping medicine, business and everyday life

Experience Club’s Longevity Forum brought together medical experts and business leaders to examine how prevention, personalized care and advances in health science are changing the way people think about living longer — and better.

Longevity is moving beyond the idea of simply extending lifespan. The conversation is increasingly centered on how to preserve cognitive health, physical capacity, autonomy and quality of life throughout those additional years.

That shift was at the center of the Experience Club Longevity Forum Miami 2026, held yesterday in Miami for an audience of around 60 guests. Organized around two panels — “What is Longevity” and “The Science and Business of Longevity” — the forum brought together specialists whose work spans sleep medicine, metabolic health, neuroscience, preventive care, regenerative therapies and healthy aging.

The first panel examined the foundations of longevity through preventive medicine, sleep, metabolic health and neuroscience. Dr. Carlos A. Torre, Dr. Michelle Pearlman, Dr. Ravi Ganesh and Dr. David S. Filippi brought perspectives spanning sleep and obesity medicine, nutrition, chronic disease prevention, cognition and emerging technologies.

The second panel moved into the science, treatments and business opportunities around longevity, with Ksenia Petrushkina, Dr. Gavin Ajami, Michael Polakov and Priscila Hawthorne discussing preventive care, regenerative therapies, performance, aesthetic medicine and the growing intersection between longevity, hospitality, real estate and wealth management. Stephen Brudzewski, founder of Feel Peptides and Feelrx, participated as moderator.

The event was supported by Miami DDA, Baptist Health, Delta, Wheels Up and Delano.

A more personal approach to longevity

For Marcelo Goulart, CEO of Experience Club US, the decision to bring longevity into the organization’s 2026 agenda followed a subject that had been gaining relevance for some time.

“We first started paying closer attention to longevity at South by Southwest two years ago. Since then, the field has evolved very quickly. It is a universal topic because people increasingly understand that it may be possible not only to live longer, but to live those years better,” Goulart said.

The forum was developed with the Miami Downtown Development Authority (Miami DDA) after months of preparation around a subject that has expanded far beyond traditional conversations about aging.

One of the themes that emerged from the panels was the growing importance of individualized care. Genetics are part of the equation, but so are nutrition, sleep, metabolism, physical activity, hormonal balance and lifestyle. Rather than organizing longevity around a universal prescription, the discussion pointed to a model increasingly shaped by each person’s biological characteristics, habits and risk profile.

“The individual dimension came through very strongly,” Goulart said. “Each person has different needs based on genetics, lifestyle and personal characteristics. Nutrition and sleep were important parts of the conversation, but so was social life. Living in community and maintaining relationships also have an important role.”

That perspective shifts the emphasis from lifespan alone to healthspan: the years in which people remain healthy, active and independent.

It also helps explain why longevity is becoming relevant beyond the medical field. The subject now intersects with decisions about work, leadership, financial planning, housing, hospitality and lifestyle, while opening space for new services and business models built around prevention and personalized health.

For Goulart, the forum also helped make a complex field more accessible.

“We were able to bring together a very strong group for two panels and create a rich discussion around what longevity actually means: gaining more years of life, but with quality.”