Preventive health company Axo Longevity has recently closed an oversubscribed $5 million seed round to expand its biomarker membership across Europe. In an exclusive interview, its co-founder tells CareTech World how the same model could help care providers spot risk earlier, reduce avoidable hospital admissions, and support people receiving care at home.
Axo Longevity tests more than 100 biomarkers twice a year and turns the results into a personalised health plan. It is now live in the UK, Ireland, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and, in its first Latin American market, Peru.
The service is sold to consumers. But speaking to CareTech World, Co-Founder and CEO Andrew McCarthy argued that it could be a natural fit for organisations delivering social care, where much of today’s health monitoring still waits for something to go wrong.
The gap between feeling healthy and being healthy
McCarthy describes conventional healthcare as reactive by design. “You can use it when you get sick, when you get cancer, or when you have a heart attack – only then can you access it,” he said.
Even the annual check-up, he argues, is built to catch disease rather than prevent it. A standard test covers 10 to 15 biomarkers, followed by a few minutes with a doctor and a generic report that is hard to understand.
“The most dangerous thing we have right now is the gap between feeling healthy and being healthy,” he said. “High blood pressure often has no symptoms, and prediabetes can go undetected for years. The body is incredibly good at compensating until it can’t anymore.”
He speaks from experience. “I looked healthy. I trained, I ate well, I had no symptoms. If I had graded my health from one to 10, I would have said nine. In reality I was closer to a six.” A full panel showed raised ApoB, Lp(a) and other cardiovascular markers that would otherwise have gone unnoticed for years.
Axo’s answer is a loop rather than a one-off test:
- Baseline – a blood panel of 100+ biomarkers, measured against optimal ranges rather than population averages
- Interpretation – what the results mean for that individual, in plain language
- Change – a phased action plan covering areas such as nutrition, training, and sleep
- Retest – a second panel six months later to see what has moved
“The reactive model waits for a symptom,” McCarthy said. “The preventive model catches inflammation before it becomes heart disease and insulin resistance before it becomes diabetes. Prevention only works if you catch things before you feel them.”
From snapshots to a full baseline
For care providers, McCarthy believes the biggest change is in what “monitoring over time” actually means. Today, he said, the pattern is familiar: “Someone checks in, something gets noticed, and if it looks serious enough, a test gets ordered, 10 or 15 markers and five minutes with a doctor along with a generic PDF. That’s not monitoring. That’s a series of snapshots with long gaps between them.”
Regular deep testing gives providers a complete baseline for each client and a record of how it changes. “You’re not guessing from what’s visible or waiting for someone to report a symptom,” he said. “You’re working from what’s actually happening inside their body, months before it would have shown up any other way.”
To make a hundred-plus results usable, the Axo Health Score combines biomarkers across more than 36 health areas – including heart, metabolism, hormones, thyroid, liver, kidneys, and immunity – into a single number that updates with every test. Members also receive a biological age measurement through GlycanAge, which reads glycan patterns on immune cells that shift with chronic inflammation and immune ageing. For a care team, a single trend line is far easier to act on than a stack of lab reports.
Axo already works with clinicians, doctors, and coaches who offer its testing to their own clients, and runs a dedicated platform for practitioners to view members’ information and request tests, where permitted. McCarthy is clear that it sits alongside clinical care, not in place of it: “If something needs a prescription, that goes back to your clinician. We tell you what to raise with them, we don’t replace them.”
Keeping people out of hospital
For older and higher-risk populations, the result is fewer emergency admissions. “Most of what sends people to hospital isn’t sudden. It builds over years,” McCarthy said. “If you find a risk while it’s still moveable, you act on it, and the event that would have put someone in an ambulance doesn’t happen.”
Axo’s own member data suggests how much goes unseen. According to the company, 56% of the people it tests have elevated Lp(a), one of the strongest cardiovascular risk markers, and none of them knew. Some 72% had at least one cardiovascular risk marker that had never appeared in previous bloodwork.
Those figures come from a group McCarthy describes as already health-conscious – “people who already train, who already track, and who already invest in this.” Even among them, 11% are ageing biologically faster than their calendar age. The implication for populations that receive care, who are typically older and less active, is clear, though Axo has not yet published data from care settings.
McCarthy also points to where health budgets go. He notes that OECD countries spend around 3% of their health budgets on prevention, with almost everything else spent “at the end, on the most expensive version of a problem, in a hospital, when the options are the worst.”
“So yes, this helps in reducing hospital admissions,” he said. “That’s the whole reason we exist.”
Care at home, and bringing families in
For people receiving care at home, getting to a lab can be the first obstacle. Axo offers at-home testing in selected countries: a kit is sent to the home and a phlebotomist visits at a scheduled time. The visit takes around 15 minutes, and the sample leaves with them. The company plans to extend at-home testing to all its markets.
“Mobility isn’t a barrier to getting the data,” McCarthy said.
The plan itself is built from an intake form covering each person’s goals and daily life, so it adapts to what is realistic for them. Someone with limited mobility will not be handed a generic gym routine. Recommendations are phased over weeks and months, up to a year, rather than delivered all at once. Members can also connect wearables they already use, so sleep and recovery data feed into the picture.
Family members and care coordinators can be brought in too. Members can share access to their dashboard with relatives or their doctor, and practitioners can use Axo’s dedicated platform where permission has been given. For a care coordinator or an adult child supporting a parent, that means seeing the direction of travel between visits, not just the result of the latest one.
The model, the AI, and what comes next
Axo’s core membership, Axo Longevity Care, costs €490 a year. It includes two blood panels of 100+ biomarkers, the Axo Health Score, biological age and personalised health plans, with membership starting from €190 a year. Testing runs through more than 1,400 laboratory locations via certified partners including Randox, Sussex Pathology, Eurofins, MDI Limbach, and Multilab. The company moved from build to live operations in 12 weeks and has more than 19,000 people on its waitlist.
AI sits on top of that data. McCarthy describes a data layer – lab results, wearables, and longitudinal records – and an intelligence layer made up of Axo’s optimal biomarker engine and AI health coach. “It connects your blood to your sleep, your training and more,” he said. “It answers the two questions that actually matter: what does this mean for my body, and what do I do with it tomorrow?”
The clinical protocols are overseen by Chief Medical Officer Dr Niko Mihic, Medical Supervisor at Real Madrid FC and former Head of NBA Research in Europe. Andy Walshe PhD, former Head of High Performance at Red Bull, is Executive Longevity Advisor.
Co-Founder and Chief Product and Growth Officer Sergio Tang said the new funding will grow the laboratory network, develop the AI health copilot, and wearable integrations, and take the service into the Nordics, Italy, and Portugal. “Europe has exceptional clinical infrastructure, but for consumers it is fragmented, and they might only be able to access it when they are sick,” he said.
For social care, that fragmentation is familiar. Whether a membership built for health-conscious consumers can scale to care homes and domiciliary care remains to be seen. But McCarthy’s argument is simple: “Any person can benefit from getting the data and intelligence that Axo Longevity provides, so they can avoid chronic conditions, preventable death, and live a better, healthier life.”
