TECH HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE 2022 GLOBAL WELLNESS SUMMIT
By Mia Kyricos, Chair of web 3 and President of Kyricos & Associates LLC
Technology was a big theme at this year’s 16th annual Global Wellness Summit in Tel-Aviv. With the theme – Open Hearts. Open Minds. Open for Business. – it was imminently clear that technology would play a central role in powering the future of health and wellness.
To start, this year’s annual Call for Innovation competition was squarely focused wellness and its place in the metaverse. Judged by global health, wellness and technology leaders from companies like Meta and Nike, this year’s winner – chosen from 70 applicants and 7 finalists from 7 countries – was Virtuleap, a health and education startup with a mission to elevate cognitive assessment and training using virtual reality and artificial intelligence. One could easily imagine its potential to better mental health and wellbeing for our planet’s citizens, among many other applications.
Next up, the Tech Innovation Pavilion, sponsored by wellness technology fund, WellTech Ventures, showcased a variety of tech-driven wellness companies from Fountain Life to Technogym and Amai Proteins. From designer proteins created for food and beverage applications to the latest technology fueling movement and precision medicine, innovation-driven Israel was the perfect backdrop to debut these advancements to wellness business leaders.
On to the main stage, we witnessed the power of circadian technology for every day wellness thanks to Timeshifter co-founder, Mickey Beyer-Clausen, who originally created the platform to aid NASA astronauts with the management of jetlag in space. We also considered the future of health and wellbeing in the metaverse thanks to Noam Gibson, Industry Manager of Digital Health for Meta in Israel. Noam noted that even though we are 5-7 years away from mass, consumer adoption, the metaverse is already delivering fitness, meditation and mindfulness to consumers with great potential for the treatment of mental health and wellness among other segments of the global wellness economy.
Moving on to food and beverage, Rachel Vizman, Co-Founder & CEO of plant-based, Savor Eat, described a world where consumers would be able to input their dietary preferences into a machine that would generate a veggie burger and fries among other specialties. Naveen Jain, CEO of Viome, a gut-health company that tests your microbiome as a means to determine what foods and supplements are best for you. He further described a future where the DNA of your skin and your hair will be able to predict what skincare or haircare is uniquely suited for you.
Finally, the Global Wellness Institute’s Web3 Initiative Chair, Mia Kyricos (yes, that’s me 😉) shared the initiative’s vision to help guide wellness business leaders to the future of ethical and practical use of Web3 technologies, starting most notably with the Metaverse but also spanning the worlds of NFTs, cryptocurrency, blockchain and more. She highlighted the initiative’s latest published resource – What Is Web 3.0 & Intersections with the Global Wellness Economy? and encouraged delegates to embrace the Web3 world as a force for good as we join together and shape the future.
For more information on the tech highlights, along with 36+ keynotes and panels by experts in all sectors of the $4.4 trillion wellness economy, the Summit on Demand Playlist is available to order here.
