The Bonita Springs, Fla. club became the first private club to introduce a “biotech bar” to its membership through a partnership with Fountain Life, a company that prioritizes preventive and proactive healthcare. Through their collaboration, Fountain Life provides Bonita Bay members with easy access to life-saving diagnostics through a white-labeled app and website.
Live longer, live better. While anyone should take these words to heart, Bonita Bay Club in Bonita Springs, Fla., is constantly finding ways to put them into action.
Late last year, the property became the first private club to introduce a “biotech bar” to its membership through a partnership with Fountain Life, a company that prioritizes preventive and proactive healthcare. Through their collaboration, Fountain Life provides Bonita Bay members with easy access to life-saving diagnostics through a white-labeled app and website powered by Fountain OS.
“Our board and our club are very forward-thinking, and we like to be on the cutting edge of what’s going on in the club industry,” says Director of Fitness Tammy Mugavero. “While golf may be king at Bonita Bay, fitness is certainly the queen. It is our job to look for ways to get our members excited about their health and wellness and to provide them with opportunities to live their best lives.”
Bonita Bay Club has partnered with Fountain Life to offer members a “biotech bar” that focuses on wellness over illness.
She believes that one of the most appealing aspects of the collaboration is that, unlike many healthcare services, Fountain Life focuses on wellness rather than illness.
“Healthcare generally caters to sick people, but their approach is different. Let’s catch this stuff before people get sick, and their chance of having a better outcome is greater,” says Mugavero. “A lot of times we don’t go to the doctor until we have symptoms. This is empowering. It’s something that no one has ever brought to us.”
Through worldwide partnerships with physicians, scientists, and age-management pioneers, Fountain Life can showcase breakthrough biotech, FDA-approved technologies with artificial intelligence and data collection to see inside the body.
Bonita Bay, which holds health-related events at least once a month, introduced the app, which is available on iPhone and Android devices, to the membership with a soft launch during a lecture on heart disease in August 2021. The property held a bigger launch at its Dinner with Docs event in December.
Before rolling out the app for the membership, however, senior leaders at Bonita Bay went through some of the tests to gather feedback.
As heart attacks are the number one cause of death in North American adults, the app, which is in its infancy, currently features an AI-enhanced Coronary CT Angiogram scan. However, the virtual biotech bar ultimately will offer a catalog of patient journeys that cover the top 10 conditions that affect health and lifespans. Others will include the Continuous Glucose Monitor journey, the Full Body MRI journey, and the Early Cancer Detection Blood Test.
The app shows an image of a body, and members can click on the CCTA journey to learn about heart health and indicate if they want further testing.
“Before the CCTA with AI overlay, cholesterol levels were the only indicators of heart health,” says Mugavero. “This links to a calcium score. It’s not a predictor. It actually tells how much ‘gummy’ plaque people have in their arteries.”
For those who want to pursue testing, the Bonita Bay concierge contacts the members directly to help them schedule tests, answer their questions, or determine their fitness for a test.
“Ultimately, they’ll be able to go into the [Fountain Life] center in Naples,” Mugavero says. “In areas without a center, they would find where tests are offered.”
Future journeys on the app will offer additional information. For instance the CGM journey will give people quantifiable information about the way their body reacts to foods.
“Our members are hungry for that kind of knowledge,” Mugavero says. “Everybody wants to live a long life, but they don’t want to be debilitated in their last years.”
The partnership focuses on promoting awareness, providing access, and delivering education at no cost to members.
“The only cost or investment would be if a member chooses to take advantage of any of the precision medicine and/or diagnostics that Fountain Life offers,” says Mugavero.
In addition, the collaboration between Bonita Bay and Fountain Life extends beyond the app. The property also brings in medical experts to discuss topics such as heart health, nutrition, pain management, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and sleep disorders.
Bonita Bay has held onsite balance screenings, diagnostic ultrasounds, chiropractic assessments and treatments, blood pressure screenings, and consultations with Fountain Life nurses, as well.
As part of its commitment to health and fitness, Bonita Bay also features five golf courses, 18 tennis courts, five (but soon 10) pickleball courts, and a state-of-the-art Fitness Center with a 43-member staff.
The partnership also supports the property’s WAVE (Wellness and Vitality Enrichment) brand, which encourages members to be active.
“Exercise is medicine, and medicine can be exercise,” says Mugavero. “It’s really about improving the quality of our members’ lives and keeping them out there doing the things they love. This is their work that keeps them out their playing.”
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