SiSU Health

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Check out this poster case study with additional information about what SiSU Health achieved during their time on the Accelerator programme.

NHS problem

Over 60% of adults in the UK are obese, 33% of the UK population is estimated to have high blood pressure (BP), with 50% of them undiagnosed or not receiving treatment and over 45 in 100,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease (for under 75s), are considered preventable [1].

Health literacy, prevention and early intervention are key, but only 3.1% of people in England who were eligible for an NHS Health Check, were offered one in 2019/2020 [1]. Of those, 61% did not take up the invite.

GP numbers are falling and NHS costs are increasing; obesity costs the NHS approximately £6 billion per year and conditions attributable to high BP are estimated to cost the NHS approximately £2 billion per year.

The solution

SiSU provide low cost, automated, medical grade health checks for hypertension, weight, body composition and other biometrics via a self-service kiosk. Additional surveys can assess other health risks such as stress or diabetes risk. The predictive analytics and engaging digital platform can engage, educate and change behaviour at a scale impractical on a human to human level. SiSU can provide detailed population health benchmarking and where required integrate into other systems or patient records. SiSU currently work with the NHS, Councils, Retailers and employers to provide free health checks to their employees, customers and members of the public.

Impact

  • Provide large scale access to a health check, increasing health literacy and facilitating health improvement and interventions:
    • Health check costs – The NHS health check cost is believed to take approximately 30 minutes of GP time. The SiSU health check costs less than £1, with the capacity to conduct 70 plus health checks per day.
    • Blood pressure check costs – The new Hypertension Case Finding service pays Pharmacists £15 per BP check and takes 30 minutes to administer. SiSU’s equivalent self-serve health checks could cost less than £1 per person and take five minutes.
  • Users have access to a SiSU online health dashboard, as well as tools and programs to support health improvement. Research has shown that repeat users of the SiSU health station benefit from self-monitoring and improve their health e.g. losing weight, improving blood pressure risk and smoking cessation.
    • As an example, 17.6% reduction in smokers was observed at University Hospital Southampton. If this were applied to the NHS workforce as a whole, it would give an annual saving (productivity and sickness) of £36 million.
    • On average, 22.9% of SiSU users with high blood pressure were able to reduce it to healthy levels, through making personal lifestyle changes or through their GP/Local Services in some cases avoiding a later hospital admission (£1675 per person).

[1] Public Health England data: fingertips.phe.org.uk