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​In light of more recent technological upgrades to the NHS, the government has announced an overhaul of NHS Health checks in turn essentially scraping the ‘one-size-fits-all’ Health MOTs for the middle aged and pathing the way for a new refurbished NHS Health Checks system.

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Currently, the NHS Health Checks scheme relies on a battery of checks which examine for issues like blood pressure and cholesterol, however with the introduction of the newly thought up changes; it’ll be using more modern technology which will be done through genetic testing to create a personalised program to prevent diseases later in a patient’s life.

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10 years ago, the NHS Health Check system was introduced as a way of helping adults aged between 40 to 74 by measuring their general health through things like blood pressure, cholesterol, and various other tests. It’s a 30 min long appointment in which that age group is invited to every five years and whilst it does help some patients, it isn’t always effective.

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With this new plan, their main goal is to reduce the costs of Health Checks by utilising new technologies that can date back into your genetics and look out for possible hereditary diseases, this will allow for you to be more aware of things you could end up facing and what you can do to counteract them before it’s too late.

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Matt Hancock, The Health Secretary has confidently said “Personalised, prevention healthcare is mission critical to the future-fit healthcare service we want to build”.

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His aims are to put the NHS in a direction of automation and allow for a more uniform and organised Healthcare Checks, hopefully allowing for genetic conditions like type 2 diabetes to be caught on before it’s too late.

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None of this downplays the success of the previous system but it’s definitely time for an upgrade! Always happy to see the NHS is moving forward with the times and saving money where it’s due.

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