What if a simple, non-invasive scan could reveal not only your current health but your biological future? For Ángel Alberich-Bayarri, CEO and co-founder of Quibim, this isn’t science fiction; it’s science in motion.
Living to 150 may sound like a bold goal, but technologies like AI, medical imaging, and digital twins are rapidly bringing it within reach. During a session at The Vertex Summit, GoHub Ventures’ annual gathering at Bellver Blue Tech Zone, Ángel shared how AI-powered medical imaging is enabling a new era of preventive, personalized, and predictive medicine.
His company, Quibim, is pioneering breakthroughs that could help us detect diseases before symptoms appear, understand our biological aging in real time, and ultimately extend the healthy years of human life.
From Reactive Care to Preventive Intelligence
For decades, healthcare has been reactive: focused on treating illness after it emerges. Quibim’s mission is to flip that equation.
By applying AI to medical imaging, the company transforms MRI, CT, and PET scans into rich, quantitative data that reveals what’s happening inside the body long before symptoms surface. Their algorithms can detect patterns invisible to the human eye, helping clinicians identify the earliest signs of cancer, autoimmune, or neurodegenerative diseases.
Quibim collaborates with major healthcare systems, hospitals, biopharma companies, and equipment manufacturers like GE Healthcare, Philips, and Siemens, providing them with AI-driven insights that enhance diagnostic precision and speed.
Unlike companies that focus on a single pathology, Quibim is building a platform capable of scaling across multiple diseases and organs. This approach allows the Valencian startup to accelerate the shift from episodic treatment to continuous prevention.
The result is a medical paradigm powered by preventive intelligence, where imaging becomes the first line of defense rather than a last resort.
The Rise of Digital Twins in Healthcare
Quibim’s long-term vision is to help build human digital twins, but the journey starts organ by organ. Ángel has been advocating this concept since 2011, when he co-authored a European Commission report on the “digital patient,” a framework describing how imaging could become the foundation for personalized healthcare.
Today, Quibim’s work focuses on organ-level modeling: using imaging and AI to characterize how specific organs evolve and how diseases emerge. “So far, we are at the level of organs,” Alberich-Bayarri explains, “but we’re now investing in cell modeling and proteins will come next.”
One example is Quibim’s AI-based prostate screening, adopted by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) to help identify early-stage prostate cancer in men over 50, an area often overlooked in preventive healthcare. Another is the company’s Liver Virtual Biopsy, a 20-second MRI that measures fat and iron levels, offering crucial insights into metabolic and cancer risks.
Each scan adds to an expanding data ecosystem that brings the digital twin vision closer to reality. By mapping every organ’s microstructure, Quibim’s technology could one day provide a full-body “digital copy” of ourselves: an evolving simulation of our biology that enables continuous, personalized health monitoring.
“Our goal is to characterize what’s happening inside the human body,” Alberich-Bayarri explained. “Imaging contains the story of our lives, AI just helps us read it.”
AI as the Engine of Preventive Medicine
Quibim’s technology goes far beyond diagnostics, it’s about prediction. By training AI models on thousands of imaging datasets, Quibim can estimate biological age versus chronological age, revealing whether an organ is aging faster than expected. This allows doctors to intervene before irreversible damage occurs.
The company’s research also shows how AI can infer genetic mutations from CT or MRI scans, critical for patients with tumors that are difficult to biopsy. This means more people could receive targeted, personalized treatments like immunotherapy instead of generic chemotherapy.
These innovations are transforming how healthcare systems think about prevention: from annual checkups to data-driven longevity programs. Regular scans, analyzed through AI, could become routine tools for tracking metabolic and cellular health, helping us take proactive steps to stay well for longer.
“With nutrition, exercise, and sleep alone, you can already improve many things,” Alberich-Bayarri noted. “But if you combine that with AI-based insights from imaging, you can truly extend your healthspan.”
Challenges and the Path Forward
But pioneering a field where AI meets medicine is complex. Every new algorithm must undergo rigorous validation and FDA or CE certification, often requiring multimillion-dollar clinical studies across diverse populations. While these regulatory hurdles slow progress, they also ensure that new technologies like Quibim’s are clinically reliable and ethically sound.
Beyond compliance, the biggest challenge is access: ensuring preventive technologies don’t widen healthcare inequalities. Ángel acknowledges that longevity should not be a privilege of the few, but a collective human achievement.
The Future: Tech as the Plan for Longevity
If living to 150 is the goal, Quibim’s technology may well be part of the plan. By combining artificial intelligence, digital twins, and medical imaging, the company is redefining preventive medicine: turning scans into insights and insights into longer, healthier lives.
The future Ángel envisions is one where AI not only detects disease but predicts and prevents it, creating a new model of healthcare that’s proactive, personalized, and profoundly human.
“We’re not just creating algorithms, we’re creating a digital understanding of life itself.”
