Humanity launched an iPhone app in the U.K. that claims to slow aging by tracking movement, nutrition, mental health and sleep data, and using that information to provide recommendations on reducing biological age.

According to TechCrunch, an Android version of the app is in progress, and the app will launch worldwide in early September. 

“It's been an incredible journey for us, as we start to rollout a data-driven approach to slowing your aging and help us all understand what actions are working to keep you healthier for longer,” tweeted the company’s co-founder Pete Ward.

Humanity has raised a total of $5 million, reported TechCrunch, with half from an initial seed fundraise last year.

WHY IT MATTERS

Humanity’s website touts that its co-founders, Ward and Michael Geer, are “determined to help humanity live healthier for longer.”

The COVID-19 pandemic dealt a huge blow to those goals in the U.S. Provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics released last month found life expectancy at birth declined from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77.3 years in 2020. 

The loss was particularly stark for racial minorities. While white Americans lost an average of 1.2 years, Black Americans’ life expectancy dropped 2.9 years, and Latinos’ life expectancy dropped a full three years.

“Mortality due to COVID-19 had, by far, the single greatest effect on the decline in life expectancy at birth between 2019 and 2020, overall, among men and women, and for the three race and Hispanic-origin groups shown in this report,” wrote the authors of the NCHS’ July report.

THE LARGER TREND

The pandemic has also contributed to a boom in digital health tools. A new report by the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science on digital health trends found more than 90,000 new health apps were released in 2020, leaving consumers more than 350,000 apps to choose from.

The report noted COVID-19 spurred some app downloads, particularly apps for telehealth, exercise and health monitoring, like blood pressure apps.

It’s a big target for fundraisers too; digital health has raised $14.7 billion already this year, according to Rock Health’s quarterly funding breakdown, already more than 2020’s $14.6 billion for the full year.