Gavin Ritchie
Gavin spent his previous career in software development and database design in a variety of employed and independent roles. Development activities for Life Insurance systems proved a launching pad to a collaboration with Stephen Richards, and the Longevitas application suite was born. Alongside steering the IT function, Gavin is the primary developer for database, Java and web-related technologies.
Articles written by Gavin Ritchie
Mitigating Multimorbidity
Aging is an unavoidable double-edged sword. Whilst it remains, as numerous wags have suggested, far better than the alternative, alongside the upsides of wisdom and experience, we often acquire long-term conditions (LTCs). Once these arrive in late-life, they usually hang around to plague us as unwelcome, life-long travelling companions. There are many diseases in this category, including diabetes, hypertension, heart or kidney disease, and neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinsons.
Moving our Mood
We have discussed biological measures of age in this blog previously, so I was interested to find that last month, research examined the relationship between depressed mood and biological aging.
Nature versus Nurture
Binary oppositions come easily to the human mind. Good and evil. Joy and sadness. Chalk and cheese. But, attracted as we are to neat categories, one question is whether these clean absolutes always exist in reality?
Long CAR Journey
We last reported on Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy treatments in a blog from 2018, where it was noted that progress within solid tumour cancers was still at early stages.
Inexplicable, Say I
Stephen recently questioned whether the hype around AI models for Life Insurance might be a case of The Emperor's New Clothes. In this blog we discuss an important point of difference: whereas in the fable, a youth reveals the expensive "invisible" new clothes have no substance at all, in our scenario, we find precisely the opposite. AI models utilising machine learning are, far from being see-through, simply not transparent enough.
Double or Quits?
More than a decade ago, we first posted on public health interventions proposed or implemented by the Scottish Government. A key focus area from those initiatives, alcohol mortality, has recently reported status, and the news does not seem encouraging. Despite the introduction of a minimum unit price (MUP) for alcohol in 2018, Scottish alcohol deaths reached a new high in 2024.
Actively Beneficial?
How should we describe a lifestyle change that doubles our likelihood of suffering a major traffic accident? Oddly, evidence from Scotland suggests the answer is "worth making". Let me explain.