Hosted by preventable disease digital platform PocDoc in partnership with the Health Innovation Network, the event began with a key note address from Ely and East MP Charlotte Cane.
Crane, whose Cambridgeshire constituency hosts PocDoc's manufacturing facility in Water Beach, said: ‘With PocDoc's Healthy Heart Check, we have an unmissable opportunity to prevent cardiovascular disease on a large scale, by catching the warning signs early and preventing one of the leading causes of premature mortality.'
Ben Bridgewater, executive chair of the Health Innovation Network, said there was a £246bn per annum opportunity from doing things better in health.
Bridgewater said cardiovascular disease was the ‘biggest addressable opportunity in the short term' among preventable conditions.
Steve Roest, chief executive & co-founder of PocDoc, agreed, adding cardiovascular prevention, if done right, could add a an entire percentage point to GDP by 2035.
‘Let's try and change the discussion from the fear of not doing it, the cost of not doing it into the massive economic unlock £40-45bn from doing it properly,' Roest argued.
Dr Matt Kearney, chief executive & co-founder of CVDACTION and senior adviser to UCLPartners, said: ‘If we achieve step change in England in three years, we will generate £2.5bn pounds in savings. We will prevent 61,000 heart attack, strokes, heart failure and kidney failure admissions, equivalent to 470,000 bed days, that's two hospitals empty for over a year. Every one pound invested, would be four pounds returned in three years.'
Bushra Effendi, advanced clinical pharmacist and clinical director of the Yorkshire Women's Forum, stressed the need for pilots to focus on a different cohort of patients.
‘If we get buy in from women, or we get buy in from different cultures and races, then surely we're going to open up the doors for research as well and actually instill people with confidence to engage with research, because that is the other barrier that we've got,' she argued.
Both Dr Kearney and Effendi agreed community pharmacies had a key role to play in disease prevention. Effendi noted 80% of the population was within 20 minute walking distance of a community pharmacy.
Dr Kearney added: ‘We need to create new pathways that will take you automatically, for example, to a community pharmacist so you can get the result checked.'
Talking to HM at the event, Roest said: ‘We want to facilitate through our technology a massive upswing or a huge step change in CVD screening and connecting people through the platform into treatment.
‘The Healthy Heart Check delivers the NHS health check in eight minutes at home or anywhere, which when it's delivered through a GP in person, is three appointments.
‘So we can really condense that time from screening to treatment, as well as unlock these cohorts of patients that were previously unknown or not accessing this health check service. And so that's our main focus. And one of the major value adds that we that we're driving for the healthcare system.'
