Diagnostics
There is an acceleration of innovation in all walks of our life including smartphones, connectivity, content, etc. But when it comes to health, particularly prevention, the experience and outcomes are still a laggard.
Same applies to annual health checks, which has become a routine nowadays. Many workplaces offer free health checks as part of health benefit for their employees. However, true potential of the health check is not realised for a long time. The reason being, when it comes to outcomes, present-day health checks are not going beyond screening for health risks or conditions and the experience is poor as well.
The health check needs reinvention to improve effectiveness and outcomes. Health check data should not only detect health risks but also identify opportunities to improve health span and longevity.
We think workplaces could generate more benefits and values if health check of the future have the following key features.
Many organisations are taking proactive measures to ensure the health of their employees. This involves the use of analytics to understand the health of the entire workforce, identify health risks and opportunities to improve it. Understanding the overall health of your organisation, its drivers and risk factors, helps in establishing an efficient and effective workplace wellness program.
The next-gen health check should provide a “State of the Health Report” for an organisation to offer a deeper understanding of its workforce health status and decision making.
It is common for a workplace to offer similar health check for every employee with categorisation based on gender and age. The health check need to be personalised based on the goals, concerns and values of the employees along with demographics. It is imperative to collect precise information on what the workforce’s needs and deliver the right health check that fits each one of them. Personalising the health check will result in better utilisation of the benefit as it appeals to all employees.
Most annual health check comes with markers that are common to everyone, such as organ function, lipid profile, blood count, etc. While these markers can give you an overview of general body function, they don't help you with deeper insights to improve your health and wellbeing. The biomarkers that measure nutrient levels, hormones, gut function, inflammation, allergies, etc should be included depending on age, gender, symptoms, and health goals.
We have attached a chart that guides you toward options that are available today.
Adult male (>18):
Adult Female (>18):
Almost 99% of lab reports are delivered as it is and reviewed by a practitioner or doctor, or nutritionist. They are trained to interpret the data and correlate it clinically. Evidence-based scores provide you with the next level of insights than the plain lab report. Health scores include risk scores, functional health indicators, and longevity indicators taken from multiple inputs to give you an accurate picture of your health and performance. Most scores need multi-modal data apart from the blood markers, such as vitals, biometrics, anthropometry, questionnaire, etc to compute the scores.
The next-gen health check report will give you broader and deeper insights.
Visiting the same lab or diagnostic centre for each year's health check is rare. Even if you do so, most labs don't provide tracking and trends based on your marker data. Further, the tracking system should support other factors like your nutrition, workouts, sleep, stress, and supplements, to see how your markers are affected. To support this correlation and to provide feedback to the user, a new system that includes longitudinal health record and algorithms is necessary for dynamic insights and guidance.
The health check data need to be paired with a system for tracking, insights, and guidance for outcomes.
Most health checks don't provide an action plan till your next health check. The recommendations offered are generic and don't improve the health status. The health check should result in a blueprint with an action plan to reduce your health risks, improve nutrition levels, optimise hormones, improve cognition and psychological health, etc. Also, the action plan should support a system of engagement, like coaches, habit formation, and persuasive tools, to produce outcomes.
The health check should result in an actionable plan and a journey system to produce health and wellbeing outcomes.
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