Veteran banker Edmund Lee (left) and Mr Vignesa Moorthy, chief executive of ViewQwest, co-founded wellness O2 Lab to ride the health and wellness wave.ST PHOTO BRIAN TEO
SINGAPORE - What started out five years ago as an attempt to help his then 82-year-old mother cope with cancer treatment has since become a lifelong passion for Mr Vignesa Moorthy, the chief executive of Singapore-based internet service provider ViewQwest.
In late December 2024, he turned this passion into a business that rides the lucrative health and wellness wave – a $1.8 trillion global market in 2024, according to McKinsey & Co.
With a total investment of about $1 million, Mr Moorthy and veteran banker Edmund Lee cofounded wellness clinic O2 Lab, which opened its doors in Riverside Point in late December 2024.
The stars in the clinic: three space capsule-like metal chambers that offer hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). Depending on the number of seats installed, a chamber can easily cost upwards of $100,000. O2 Lab has a single-person chamber, as well as a double-seater and four-seater.
HBOT, which involves breathing pure oxygen in a pressurised environment, has been used for decades in hospitals to treat decompression sickness commonly experienced by divers.
It is also an established treatment for sudden hearing loss, carbon monoxide poisoning, poor-healing wounds and radiation injuries.
More recently, HBOT has transitioned from hospitals to wellness clinics that say it offers a range of other benefits, from improved vitality, sleep and cognitive function to anti-ageing.
O2 Lab adds to at least five other wellness clinics here – including The Longevity Science Centrum in Guthrie House and Phiten in Marina Square – that offer oxygen therapy at various atmospheric pressures.
At O2, fees start from $180 for one hour of treatment, similar to what other wellness clinics charge.
“I started looking at this wellness space when my mother was first diagnosed with cancer in 2020,” said Mr Moorthy.
Parts of her colon were removed, but the cancer soon metastasised to the liver. She had radiation treatment, but the tumour continued to grow.
“As her primary caregiver, I explored every possible solution to help my mother get a better quality of life,” Mr Moorthy said.
“If I had a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to help her recover from the procedures, I might have been willing to explore more aggressive, curative treatments such as chemotherapy or liver surgery,” he said, referring to HBOT’s potential to accelerate cancer patients’ recovery.
His mother died of cancer in 2023. It only made him dive deeper into health and wellness technology. Now, he also regularly attends biohacking conferences overseas to stay abreast of these trends.
“O2 Lab is about technology intervention. But wellness also has to be accompanied by exercise, nutrition and sleep,” said Mr Moorthy, 51, who has a single-seat hyperbaric oxygen chamber at home for personal use. He enters the chamber every day for anti-ageing and vitality purposes.
First-timers at O2 Lab need to sign a health declaration form and disclose any known medical conditions as well as surgery that may affect their ability to safely undergo the therapy.
The clinic may refuse customers treatment for safety reasons. For instance, people with respiratory or lung conditions or seizure disorders will not be given HBOT unless they get clearance from a doctor.
Pushing new frontiers
Market researcher Euromonitor International has named healthspan, the disease-free and highly functional period of one’s life, as a top global consumer trend driving purchases in 2025 alongside artificial intelligence and sustainability.
Ground-breaking HBOT studies to extend healthspan are currently being done in Israel’s Sagol Centre for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research, billed as the largest HBOT centre in the world, treating more than 350 patients a day.
Scientists there are trying out new uses for HBOT such as treatment for stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes and long Covid, as well as for accelerating the recovery of cancer patients and those with post-traumatic stress disorder.
They are also studying how HBOT might enhance athletic performance. In fact, HBOT use among athletes is already taking hold. Soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo and tennis player Novak Djokovic have used HBOT to recover from injuries, as well as in day-to-day recovery after matches.
The stars in the clinic: three space capsule-like metal chambers that offer hyperbaric oxygen therapy.ST PHOTO: BRIAN TEO.
Many wellness clinics around the world are already jumping on the trend and have placed their bets on the technology.
Professor Brian Kennedy, distinguished professor at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, said: “A lot of these clinics are way ahead of what’s going on in the academic world. Some of them are probably doing things that don’t work, but they are worth paying attention to.”
Prof Kennedy, who is also director of National University Health System’s Centre for Healthy Longevity, has done studies on ageing and longevity for over three decades in the US and in Singapore in various capacities.
His research here seeks to demonstrate that longevity interventions can be successfully employed in humans to extend healthspan. These interventions include lifestyle modifications such as a healthier diet, exercise and better sleep.
Prof Kennedy advises longevity wellness clinics globally.
He visits The Longevity Science Centrum in Guthrie House, which has been in business for close to two years with a total investment of about $1 million.
Its director Hana Wong said that most of her 80 monthly regular customers seek HBOT to combat ageing and to sleep better.
Like O2 Lab’s Mr Moorthy, Ms Wong started taking an interest in HBOT after seeing a family member suffer while battling cancer.
Healthspan-hungry customers are also willing to double down on their wellness goals.
Ms Jane Josephine, for one, has been visiting O2 Lab for up to four times a week since November 2024, when she restarted chemotherapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer.
The 66-year-old perfumer is aware that HBOT may not cure her of her cancer, which has relapsed. But she hopes it would reduce the side effects – such as shortness of breath, numbness in her fingers and extreme fatigue – she experienced when she went for chemotherapy in 2022.
She still works full time and would like to continue regular fitness training to manage her lower back pain. “This time, I want to feel more lively than before,” she said.
Irene Tham is an assistant news editor and oversees tech coverage as The Straits Times’ technology editor.
How does hyperbaric oxygen therapy work, and is it suitable for everyone?
Supplying pure oxygen at an ambient pressure two to three times greater than the air pressure at sea level increases the blood’s oxygen-carrying capacity. This is because the lungs can gather much more oxygen in a pressurised environment than breathing pure oxygen at normal air pressure.
Hyperbaric oxygen chambers in wellness centres in Singapore can reach up to 2 ATA (atmospheres absolute), while those in hospitals can go even higher.
Not-for-profit American academic medical centre Mayo Clinic said that oxygen-saturated blood accelerates tissue recovery by stimulating neurovascular regeneration. Effects on the body include removing trapped air bubbles, enhancing the growth of new blood vessels and tissues, as well as supporting immune system activity.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) first became an established treatment for decompression sickness in deep-sea divers in the US in the 1940s. Its use expanded to treat carbon monoxide poisoning in the 1960s. Since then, it has had many more medicinal and therapeutic uses.
Singapore General Hospital (SGH) provides HBOT for acute ischaemic wounds, poor-healing wounds, acute sensorineural hearing loss and radiation injury, in addition to decompressive illness and carbon monoxide poisoning. Ischaemia refers to a lack of blood supply to a part of the body and may cause tissue damage.
SGH’s Hyperbaric and Diving Medicine Centre, formed in 2008 with the Republic of Singapore Navy, provides 24-hour emergency and critical care for patients here and in the region. In 2024, most of the 250 patients that came to the SGH centre had poor-healing wounds, radiation injury and sensorineural hearing loss.
SGH does not provide HBOT for anti-ageing, chronic hearing loss and chronic lung conditions resulting from previous infection, citing a lack of evidence of the effectiveness of HBOT for these conditions.
There is also the risk of complications.
American healthcare and academic group Johns Hopkins Medicine said that HBOT is not for people who have had a recent ear surgery or injury, a cold or fever, or certain types of lung diseases.
Common complications include trauma to the middle ear, eye damage, lung collapse, low blood sugar and sinus problems. In rare, severe cases, a person can get oxygen poisoning, possibly leading to seizures, fluid in the lungs or lung failure.
For people with existing medical conditions, they are also advised to get clearance from their doctor before undergoing HBOT.
“The key thing is safety, right?” said Professor Brian Kennedy, distinguished professor at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.
He said that hospitals are conservative as there is no conclusive evidence of the benefits of HBOT to general recovery, wellness and anti-ageing even though the therapy is promising.
“High oxygen makes you feel good and may be good for cells and wound healing. And also, when you go from a high oxygen to a normal oxygen (environment), your brain may turn on a hypoxic response, which induces protective stress response pathways for long-term health. The question is: ‘Can you turn it on frequently enough to see long-term effects?’ I don’t think we have solid data on that yet,” he said.
A hypoxic response refers to an increase in breathing in response to reduced arterial oxygen pressure.
“Having said that, I’m very much about empowering people to make their own decisions, particularly when it comes to health,” Prof Kennedy added.
