Longevity in France? We have an app for that

An app for chronic pain and a health monitoring system are among offerings proposed by two French start-ups in the healthy ageing field. 

The first, called FriLi, is the brainchild of Lili Road-Gheysens, a Lille University English lecturer, art therapist and a patient-expert: a sufferer recognised as an expert in their condition.

Speaking at the recent Genii Longevity conference, she called chronic pain “one of the hidden barriers to healthy longevity”.

This is defined as pain lasting more than three months or which keeps coming back, and which does not always have a readily identified cause. 

“It has a tremendous impact on patients,” she said. “It triggers higher mortality rates, reduced ability at work and impaired quality of life. It also has an impact on society as a whole as it generates extra costs for the healthcare system and our society.

“One in five people worldwide suffers from chronic pain, but that’s not the worst part: 70% think their care is not appropriate or adequate.”

She said in France only 3% of sufferers have access to a centre dedicated to chronic pain management.

Launching this month, her app incorporates ideas from her book, published in English this month: Breaking Free from Chronic Pain. FriLi is looking for users to help test the initial version before a “fuller” version launches in spring 2026.

 “I want to create a hub for chronic pain, where everything you read is validated by neuroscience, because if you just go to Dr Google, it’s not always right," she said.

The app will offer online workshops on art therapy or techniques such as pain reprocessing therapy or somatic tracking. It will also give access to a community of other sufferers and, in time, may be tailored to a user’s condition.

Another start-up, Sunwaves Medtech in Nice, will have a central platform run by AI and manged by a team of doctors. 

Users will be given health monitoring sensors to use at home, or they may link up their own devices, such as connected watches or rings.

CEO Philippe Dedrie told The Connexion: “Users have an online appointment with a doctor to discuss their medical history, assisted by AI. Then we follow them day-to-day and send information about wellbeing and their environment. All the medical data is given to their doctor.”

Sunwaves is launching a version for elderly or disabled people and those with long-term health conditions, called Allo-DoCs, in France this month.

Users can contact a doctor at any time for advice. If the system picks up on medical emergencies, its doctors attempt to contact the user and/or call the emergency services. 

“We’re capable now, with several connected devices, of detecting a heart attack, stroke or risk of a fall in advance,” Mr Dedrie said. 

“Our tests found we can predict a heart attack three weeks before, 70% of the time. That means we can inform the doctor, who can decide what must be done, or send the person to the right hospital, at the right time.”

A version for optimising longevity is to be trialled in the US before it is made available in France.

“We're going to help doctors working in the field of longevity to get to know each patient better,” Mr Dedrie said.

“It's one thing to take action to improve cardiac activity, for example: we can use new protocols to strengthen and rejuvenate the heart. But nobody can see what's going on next door, ie. how all the organs work together.

“We're able to say: ‘You're acting on the heart, and this is what the treatment does for the heart, but here is what it does for kidney function, breathing, the quality of sleep, etc.”