SiSU Health: A Cost-Effective Solution for Improving the Health of the UK Population

Over 60% of adults in the UK are obese, and 33% of the population is estimated to have high blood pressure (BP), with 50% of them undiagnosed or not receiving treatment. Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of preventable deaths, with over 45 in 100,000 deaths occurring in those under 75 years old. Health literacy, prevention, and early intervention are key to addressing these issues, but unfortunately, only 3.1% of people in England who were eligible for an NHS Health Check were offered one in 2019/2020. Of those, 61% did not take up the invite.

The reasons for this low uptake are varied, but one significant factor is a shortage of GP numbers and increasing NHS costs. Obesity alone costs the NHS approximately £6 billion per year, and conditions related to high BP are estimated to cost around £2 billion per year.

SiSU Health is a digital platform that provides low-cost, automated health checks to assess risks such as hypertension and obesity. These checks can be conducted via self-service kiosks, with additional surveys available to assess other health risks, such as diabetes risk or stress. SiSU Health's predictive analytics and engaging digital platform can engage, educate, and change behavior at a scale that is impractical on a human-to-human level.

SiSU Health works with the NHS, councils, retailers, and employers to provide free health checks to employees, customers, and members of the public. The cost of a SiSU health check is less than £1, with the capacity to conduct 70 or more checks per day. This is significantly less than the cost of a health check administered by a GP, which is believed to take approximately 30 minutes and costs more. SiSU Health's self-serve health checks for blood pressure, which can be administered in just five minutes, cost less than £1 per person.

Users of SiSU Health's health station have access to an online health dashboard and tools and programs to support health improvement. Research has shown that repeat users of SiSU's platform benefit from self-monitoring and can improve their health, such as losing weight, improving blood pressure risk, and quitting smoking. As an example, a 17.6% reduction in smokers was observed at University Hospital Southampton. If this reduction were applied to the NHS workforce as a whole, it would result in an annual saving (in productivity and sickness) of £36 million.

On average, 22.9% of SiSU Health users with high blood pressure were able to reduce it to healthy levels by making personal lifestyle changes or through their GP/local services. In some cases, this helped avoid a later hospital admission, which costs around £1675 per person.

Overall, SiSU Health offers a cost-effective solution for improving the health of the UK population and reducing the burden on the NHS. By providing access to health checks and self-monitoring tools, SiSU has been successful in reducing smoking rates and improving blood pressure levels, leading to cost savings for the NHS and increased productivity.