PocDoc offers heart health checks on mobile cancer test bus

Digital health diagnostics company PocDoc has partnered with NHS Birmingham and Solihull to offer free heart health checks via a special bus for citizens and promote awareness of the importance of cancer screening.

The partnership, which began in June 2025, is expected to deliver thousands of health checks annually across Birmingham and Solihull, contributing to the ambitions of the government’s 10 year health plan, which is focused on creating a neighbourhood health service and shifting from treating ill-health to prevention.

Kafilla Munir, cancer partnership improvement manager at Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Board, said: “We are really excited to be working in collaboration with PocDoc. This new addition to our existing screening services, will provide some much-needed heart health monitoring.

“We think that this is a unique opportunity to combine technology and the knowledge we have around health and early intervention to try and get people to understand the importance of healthy living.”

Residents across Birmingham and Solihull were offered PocDoc’s Healthy Heart Check on a bus tour in June 2025, which involved a finger-prick blood test that delivers a full cholesterol and diabetes profile, BMI, heart age, and a 10-year risk score for heart attack or stroke.

One in four participants on the bus recorded a QRISK score above 10%, meaning they are at a high risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), while 69% were classified as overweight or obese, a key risk factor associated with CVD.

CVD remains the UK’s leading cause of premature death, responsible for 170,000 deaths each year and costing the NHS over £7.4 billion annually, according to a press release issued on 13 August 2025.

Steve Roest, chief executive at PocDoc, said: “We are thrilled to be partnering with the NHS in Birmingham and Solihull on this initiative, to provide crucial CVD screening to underserved communities.

“Health inequality remains a major issue in the UK. By offering additional screening touchpoints in the community, this partnership provides more opportunities for people to take preventative action on their health and access the care and support they need – without needing to visit a GP.

“It’s already clear from these early results just how powerful community-based screening can be in identifying those at risk and making preventative healthcare more accessible to those who need it most.”

The next NHS Birmingham and Solihull Cancer Bus Tour begins on 8 September 2025.

PocDoc announced in February 2025 that it has partnered with personal health record and patient engagement platform Patients Know Best (PKB) to enable patients to more easily access and share their screening results.

Through PKB’s platform, patients using the Healthy Heart Check can view and share their screening results and see all of their data through an integration with the NHS App.