Healthy Living Partnership and Community Pharmacy Essex (LPC) commission PocDoc as technology partner to deliver health checks across Essex to reduce the prevalence of cardiovascular disease across the UK.

PocDoc has partnered with Healthy Living Partnership, in conjunction with Community Pharmacy Essex - Local Pharmaceutical Committee (LPC), to provide essential national health checks in community pharmacies across Essex.

This multi-year partnership, commissioned by the local NHS system, aims to increase patient access and awareness of cardiovascular disease screening tools, promote early detection with clinical intervention, and ultimately improve patient outcomes against the UK’s second leading cause of death.

Working together, PocDoc and Healthy Living Partnership will integrate the Healthy Heart Checks into over 200 community pharmacies across Essex, providing entire communities in Essex with access to complete digital heart health screening.

This campaign follows PocDoc’s recent involvement in a similar programme funded by the Department of Health and Social Care in Cumbria. In addition, PocDoc has also rolled out its Healthy Heart Checks in Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees as part of a nationally funded programme to increase cardiovascular disease prevention across the UK.

The initial outlay for implementing PocDoc in community pharmacies is minimal, which allows pharmacies that are hard to reach or are unable to predict usage of the health check to provide the service without a large financial investment upfront.

A note from Karen Samuel-Smith Chief Officer of Community Pharmacy Essex (LPC) 

“This project is to help support us as we've just taken on responsibility for the management of NHS health checks through community pharmacies. I think that there is some value in supporting patients who have been diagnosed with raised cholesterol to check that their medication is perhaps having the desired effect and to support that medicine’s adherence. And there is a good level of interest in people that have made lifestyle changes to see that those are having an impact.”

The PocDoc Healthy Heart Check

PocDoc’s Healthy Heart Check is an accessible cardiovascular disease screening tool which uses PocDoc’s microfluidic assay technology, including their patented HUESnap® AI platform. With the help of a smartphone or tablet, patients using the Healthy Heart Check will receive their:

Complete lipid profileHealthy heart age (Using the QRISK3 algorithm – which is used by the NHS )10-year risk of a heart attack or stroke.

Patients across Essex will also benefit from access to a certified clinician to discuss their results or have the option to send their results straight to their GP.

A note from Steve Roest, CEO at PocDoc

“This multi-year, locally commissioned partnership with PocDoc and the Healthy Living Partnership is a major step forward towards our goal of making essential health checks accessible to everyone via community pharmacies. Community pharmacies play a huge role in reducing the health inequality gap, and with over 300 pharmacies in the Essex region, more people than ever will now have access to complete health checks.”

About Healthy Living Partnership & Community Pharmacy Essex (LPC)

Established in 2015, Healthy Living Partnership’s main purpose is to bid for and manage services on behalf of Community Pharmacy Essex. Community Pharmacy Essex represents around 300 community pharmacies across Essex and works closely with pharmacies in Norfolk, Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, Suffolk, Hertfordshire, and Bedfordshire. Community Pharmacy Essex currently offers pharmacy services such as Flu vaccines and the NHS Health Check, as well as awareness campaigns geared towards no smoking and preventing substance misuse.