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Lara Lewington on AI, ageing and why health tech needs a human touch
Lara Lewington – who spoke at THE FIX health-tech festival near Oxford on September 18 2025 – doesn’t deal in hype. The broadcaster and technology journalist deals in clarity. “I don’t think we should be scared of AI,” she says. “But I think we should be very mindful.”
By Joe Rowan, July 17 2025 (updated October 6 2025)
Lara Lewington – who spoke at THE FIX health-tech festival near Oxford on September 18 2025 – doesn’t deal in hype. The broadcaster and technology journalist deals in clarity. “I don’t think we should be scared of AI,” she says. “But I think we should be very mindful.”
That balance – between excitement and realism – has defined her career. As co-presenter of the BBC’s long-running tech show Click, she’s spent the best part of two decades making the digital future accessible to a mainstream audience. But lately, her attention has turned to something even more personal: our health.
“I’ve been interested in a lot of areas of tech over the years,” she says. “But when it comes to health, it’s the most human of all. This is about how we live longer without disease.”
Her new book, Hacking Humanity: How technology can save your health and your life, explores how AI, wearables, and longevity science are transforming what we know about wellbeing. But it’s grounded in something simpler: how to take back control. “What really surprised me was how often people came back to the basics. The evidence still shows lifestyle is key. But now, tech is helping us understand what that actually means for us individually – not just some average person in a study.”
Lewington is quick to add that she’s no hardcore optimiser. “I’m not biohacking. I run a bit, I lift some weights. But I’m at the high end of average in terms of my lifestyle – and I think that’s important. You don’t need to go to extremes to see benefits. You just need better information.”
That, she believes, is where technology has the most promise. With new sensors, long-term tracking, and AI that can detect patterns humans would miss, we’re beginning to personalise health in a way that’s never been possible. “We’ve always had advice about diet, sleep, exercise. But now we’ve got the tools to make it personal. The smart use of data – combined with new sensors and AI – is letting us track patterns over time in a way that actually helps people change their behaviour.”
But she’s just as clear-eyed about the risks. “Trust in AI – especially when it comes to our health – is going to be very hard-won. And it should be. Because people don’t just want accuracy. They want accountability. They want empathy.”
She draws a parallel with self-driving cars. “Even if autonomous vehicles end up having fewer accidents than humans, we’re less forgiving when they make mistakes we don’t understand. And it’ll be the same with AI in health. There are emotional, human layers that the technology has to work with – not override.”
In Hacking Humanity, Lewington explores tools that can spot early signs of Parkinson’s from eye scans, detect depression through subtle changes in facial expression, or combine genomics and imaging to personalise cancer treatment. But one of the moments that stayed with her most wasn’t technical at all – it was a conversation with a 103-year-old woman in California’s so-called Blue Zone, where people regularly live to 100 and beyond. “She was physically well, mentally sharp. But she told me she didn’t really recommend living this long. She’d outlived her daughter by 30 years. It reminded me that health isn’t just about staying alive – it’s about connection, purpose, meaning.”
That nuance runs through all her work. She aims to make the conversation around health tech encouraging rather than intimidating. “The tech is coming. The change is coming. But the choices still belong to us.”
Lara Lewington was a keynote speaker at THE FIX 2025, the health-tech innovation festival that took place at Harwell Science Campus in Oxfordshire on September 18 2025.
