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Building a Better Future: The Foundations of MyHealthspan’s Mission & Values

How We Work
Published:
January 25, 2025

Author: Rex Farrand

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Building a Better Future: The Foundations of MyHealthspan’s Mission & Values

Building a Better Future: The Foundations of MyHealthspan

We’re on a mission to extend healthspan—years free from serious disease—by decades, not years. Discover the driving forces behind MyHealthspan’s culture, long-term goals, and values, and how they shape our journey toward transforming preventative healthcare.

Article Highlights

  • Our mission is to extend healthspan—years lived without serious disease—by decades, not years.
  • We’ve set ambitious long-term goals like accelerating access to cutting-edge tests and making Canada a global leader in preventive healthcare.
  • Our values guide daily decisions, emphasizing ownership, urgency, rigorous thinking, and collaboration.
  • We embrace challenges no one has solved before, accepting that mistakes will be made and lessons will be learned.
  • By aligning personal responsibility with relentless innovation, we aim to transform lives and health outcomes worldwide.

Why We Exist

According to the World Health Organization, the average person in Canada and the U.S. will live to be around 82 years old. Yet they’ll only experience about 66 of those years free from serious diseases—that’s their healthspan. This stark gap means 16 years coping with significant illness. We won’t settle for that.

At MyHealthspan, our mission can be stated in a single sentence: Extend healthspan by decades, not years. Far from a casual slogan, this mission defines our reason for being. We believe proactive health measures, advanced testing, and relentless pursuit of excellence can shift the status quo, granting people more vibrancy and fewer years weighed down by chronic illness.

Setting Ambitious Long-Term Goals

A mission can spark big, audacious goals, and we’ve crystallized several that guide our strategy and operations:

  1. Accelerate Access to Cutting-Edge, Evidence-Based Health Tests
    We see a future where people can easily discover their personal risk factors and early indicators before conditions spiral into crisis.
  2. Increase Personal Health Literacy & Transparency
    We want you to understand every metric, so you can make informed choices daily.
  3. Empower Daily Transparency into Longevity Potential
    We believe in continuous, near-real-time feedback loops that highlight how choices—like what you had for breakfast—impact longevity.
  4. Empower Increased Proactive Health Ownership
    That means actively monitoring, adjusting, and improving metrics, rather than waiting for a doctor’s intervention.
  5. Increase Preventative Health Market Share
    By shifting the system toward proactive diagnostics and interventions, we can reduce the burden of reactive treatments.
  6. Make Canada a Global Leader in Preventative Healthcare
    Canada’s potential to spearhead transformative health solutions is boundless. If we can prove the model here, it becomes a blueprint for global expansion.
  7. Create the Next Generation of Global Health Metrics
    We see data as a powerful engine of innovation, driving novel metrics that capture aspects of health we’ve yet to quantify accurately.
  8. Revolutionize the Traditional Healthcare System
    A big picture aim is to reshape how healthcare is delivered—shifting mindsets from treatment to genuine prevention, supported by robust data.

Defining Principle Values: Our Cultural DNA

A major part of our success comes from living our values daily. Through honest reflection, we compiled a memorandum that captures who we are:

  1. No One Has Done This Before
    We’re treading new territory—developing a holistic longevity platform. Because many of the biggest challenges remain unsolved, we expect to make mistakes. We see these missteps as stepping stones to breakthrough innovations.
  2. Ownership Is an Expectation
    Each member of our team acts as the CEO of their work. Our customers trust us with something invaluable: extra years of health. That level of responsibility fuels our drive. We work flexible hours, but that can mean late nights or weekends when the situation demands it.
  3. Move with Urgency
    Time is our customers’ most precious resource. We push ourselves to launch new tests, refine dashboards, and improve guidance swiftly. An idea that sits dormant for months might cost someone months of better health.
  4. Think Rigorously
    Our decisions are rooted in first principles rather than blindly replicating industry norms. We embrace constructive criticism and consider the best version of any opposing argument. This intellectual humility keeps our solutions grounded in science and logic.
  5. Share Early, Collaborate Always
    Frequent, transparent communication nips misunderstandings in the bud. By sharing ideas, progress, and setbacks from the get-go, we promote alignment and cross-pollination of insights.

Culture in Practice: Every Day at MyHealthspan

We’re building something entirely new. That doesn’t just mean novel technology; it also means forging a culture aligned with big goals. Some practical manifestations of this culture include:

  • Continuous Feedback Loops: We actively seek peer reviews, user testing, and expert opinions. This fosters an atmosphere where it’s normal to get 360-degree input, reflecting our “share early” principle.
  • Personal Sacrifice for Impact: We hold flexible schedules, but results matter deeply. A product manager might pull a late night before a major release if it means a family gets access to a vital new test sooner.
  • Intellectual Curiosity: Suppose a new study suggests a ground-breaking biomarker for Alzheimer’s risk. Rather than waiting for mainstream adoption, we’ll analyze the evidence. If credible, we explore how to integrate that test into our kits or coaching.

Why Accept the Challenges?

Some might ask: “Why sign up for a path where success is far from guaranteed?” Our answer is straightforward: because the payoff—adding healthy years to people’s lives—is too significant to pass up. We see a future where the average healthspan creeps closer to the average lifespan, drastically reducing those 16 years currently spent with serious disease.

Moving the Needle on Healthcare

We’re not content with incremental tweaks. We want to change how society views preventative care. Our kit-based model, combined with personalized metrics and coaching, aims to shift the reliance on reactive visits to doctors. Over time, as we gather data and refine interventions, we hope to significantly reduce the onset of chronic diseases.

Example: If a 45-year-old sees early markers of metabolic dysfunction, they might make lifestyle changes that prevent type 2 diabetes entirely. That’s the kind of real-world impact our daily hustle aims to deliver.

Embracing Personal Growth

Aligned values also mean personal development is crucial. Many of our team members talk about mini-MBAs—self-driven learning in fields like product design, marketing, or data analytics. Being part of MyHealthspan often means jumping into areas beyond your formal job title because accelerating a solution sometimes requires cross-functional effort.

Looking to the Future

With our mission, goals, and values as guiding lights, we’re pushing forward every day. Our biggest aspiration is a world where longevity solutions are as common as smartphones, where a person’s daily decisions are fueled by clear data and supportive coaching. Canada is our starting point, but we’ll expand globally as soon as we prove our model.

Summary

  1. Mission: Extend healthspan by decades.
  2. Long-Term Goals: From increasing personal health literacy to making Canada a leader in preventative healthcare.
  3. Values: Emphasize ownership, urgency, rigorous thought, sharing early, and relentless innovation.
  4. Culture: Transparent, fast-moving, collaborative, and never afraid to tackle unsolved challenges.

We believe that by staying true to these foundations, we’ll not only help people live longer but also empower them to live those extra years with vitality and purpose. This is MyHealthspan. We’re forging a future where proactive, evidence-based health measures become the norm—and we’re honored you’re here to be part of it.

https://www.myhealthspan.com/articles/myhealthspan-foundations-mission-values