The motivation for launching PocDoc stems from a personal experience in my childhood, when my father suffered a major stroke caused by undiagnosed cardiovascular (CVD) disease. I’m now at a similar age to when he experienced this, and have realised first hand the impact of leaving chronic diseases undiagnosed - what it means for the individual, their careers, the impact it has on their families and our healthcare system.
When I met my two co-founders, who are incredible scientists, we realised we could make a huge impact in millions of peoples lives with our novel technology.
My personal journey is what drives my passion for our mission. In the UK, the NHS currently spends more treating CVD, renal and metabolic diseases than any other illness - all diseases which can be prevented with better detection and treatment. This realisation led me to think about how we can use early diagnostics and digital tools to make screening easier, more accessible and convenient.
Through PocDoc’s innovative smartphone-based technology, we are on a mission to screen 150 million people in ten years. In doing so, we aim to save millions of lives and billions of pounds for healthcare systems while addressing the growing burden of cardiovascular and other chronic diseases.
Tell us about the business – what it is, what it aims to achieve, who you work with, how you reach customers and so on?
PocDoc is one of the UK’s leading digital diagnostics startups, on a mission to change the way we view and test for chronic diseases. We enable individuals to detect and prevent these diseases quickly and easily, all via their phone.
PocDoc’s NHS-approved “Healthy Heart Check” harnesses our innovative, proprietary smartphone-based technology that enables people to undertake a comprehensive cholesterol profile check at home, at work or in the community. Our simple finger-prick test takes less than 10 minutes, and provides patients with a full cholesterol profile, BMI score, calculates heart age, and provides a ten-year risk assessment for heart attacks or strokes.
Results are processed and appear instantly and can be shared directly with GPs either via the NHS app or manually - our test is the first to have this level of integration with the NHS app and patient record. This dramatically reduces the time it takes for an individual to arrange, undertake, and receive results back from a standard blood test. It gives valuable time back to our GPs and saves a considerable amount of money.
Chronic diseases claim the lives of millions of people every year globally, while also placing huge strain on health systems. But the key thing to remember is that a significant number of these deaths can be prevented. Increasing access to rapid screening tools like PocDoc’s can improve patient outcomes and ease the pressure on the NHS and overwhelmed health systems around the world.
We’re working closely with partners across the NHS, community pharmacies and national retailers to roll out our products across the UK, and we’ve already reached tens of thousands of people across the UK. The goal is only to expand this further.
How has the business evolved since its launch?
I first launched PocDoc with my wife Kiran and our Head of R&D, Vladimir Gubala, back in 2019. The company has - and remains to this day - centred on our joint belief in the importance of preventative care, and determination to help people detect and prevent chronic diseases before they develop.
We’ve been on an incredible journey so far, especially since the launch of the Healthy Heart Check in June 2024. It’s been incredible to see how many lives we have positively impacted in a relatively short period of time.
Tell us about the working culture at PocDoc?
Despite our rapid growth, we haven’t outsourced any of our operations, which means every aspect of the business happens on-site at our HQ near Cambridge. This ranges from the creation of each Healthy Heart Check and the research and development into new products to the packaging and posting of each test kit.
Our output capacity has grown from 3,000 a month to 300,000 within 18 months - so we are in constant growth mode.
With everyone operating in the same building, we’ve been able to create what I view as a very collaborative culture, where each employee is bought into PocDoc’s mission and the positive impact we’re making to individuals around the world.
We’re a multidisciplinary team of scientists, entrepreneurs and healthcare professionals. This has helped us foster a truly innovative culture where everyone is encouraged to bring their ideas to the table. I’m a strong believer that there is always something new to be learnt - and that is definitely the case at our HQ.
How are you funded?
We hit a big funding milestone in November last year, securing the UK’s largest ever pre-A funding for a digital diagnostics company, surpassing £10M in total funds, after raising an additional £5M from MMC Ventures, Molten VC, Simplyhealth Ventures, and KHP Ventures. This was a huge validation of our work and approach and is a testament to the commitment of the entire PocDoc team.
What has been your biggest challenge so far and how have you overcome this?
What we’re aiming to achieve at PocDoc is by no means simple. Our goal has always been to address the entire system’s needs when it comes to chronic disease prevention.
But healthcare systems are notoriously complex. Through our conversations with clinicians, healthcare managers and patients, it quickly became clear how challenging it is to effectively scale screening outside of GP surgeries and provide a service which delivers the same value and interoperability for the NHS.
There’s been no easy way around this. In the UK, what has required a lot of time, effort and graft has been building networks and getting to know as many people across the healthcare system as possible. This has been key in helping us understand exactly how to position our proposition to different stakeholders so they can conceptualise how PocDoc’s technology can best work for them.
The time investment has been worth it. People have been hugely generous with their advice, and it’s through this networking approach that we’ve built some of our successful partnerships to date with the NHS, community pharmacies and also national chains like Well Pharmacy.
How does PocDoc answer an unmet need?
The NHS currently spends more treating cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases than any other illness, with CVD alone costing the NHS £7.4B annually. CVD also takes the lives of 170,000 in the UK annually - 80% of which could be prevented via earlier detection.
PocDoc is changing this. Our test makes preventative care for CVD more accessible than ever before and enables individuals to take control of their heart health. Most importantly, we’re removing some of the barriers currently limiting some of the UK’s most at-risk- and vulnerable people from accessing diagnosis and testing, by giving them the opportunity to do so in the comfort of their own home.
We’re also supporting the needs of healthcare professionals and healthcare systems. In the UK, the NHS research estimates that each digital health check could save 20 minutes of NHS time, freeing up thousands of GP appointments, saving millions of pounds and lives over the next decade.
What’s in store for the future?
It’s a really exciting time for us at PocDoc - we really couldn’t have asked for a much more positive start to 2025. Based on our current soft-launch sales data, the Healthy Heart Check is set to be the best-selling test since the Covid-19 pandemic in the retail sector, and that’s in less than 12 months since we launched. We are rapidly becoming the default technology to drive up screening rates for CVD in communities, workplaces and homes.
While we are currently focused on delivering our NHS and pharmacy partnerships in the UK, we know that cardiovascular disease is a major health risk globally, which adds pressure to health systems around the world. Expanding our offering to support healthcare professionals and patients internationally is a goal for PocDoc, which I think we can achieve as we continue our positive growth trajectory.
We’re also looking forward to launching screening for renal and metabolic health later this year. Beyond that, I’m also really proud to have recently been appointed as a fellow of the NHS Innovation Accelerator. This is a powerful recognition of the potential our technology has to make a real difference to the UK’s healthcare system, and their support will be key as we look to scale the business further in the years to come.
What one piece of advice would you give other founders or future founders?
Spend more time than you think on your problem statement, on discovering and quantifying real customer problems before you start developing your solution. Proactively spend time yourself as a founder speaking to potential customers and users before you start building and continuously return to customers and users to check as you build that you’re on track. Products and services that solve real, large and urgent customer needs will win the market.
And finally, a more personal question! What’s your daily routine and the rules you’re living by at the moment?
I don’t want to sound like a tech founder cliché but I do wake up early - partly because I’ve got three young kids. I usually aim to do a bit of exercise before the children wake up and review my emails and actions for the day. Then my wife and I have breakfast with the kids and take them to school.
After that, it’s all work. No one day or week is the same when you run your own business. We’re going through a period of rapid growth, so I’m travelling a lot at the moment, meeting new partners and working on our various initiatives. However, I try to make sure that once a week, I spend the whole day in our HQ in Cambridge. Every other Tuesday, I host my live show, the HealthTech Hour, which now has 300,000 streams a month. I’m usually able to wrap up work by 6pm, then, like lots of people, wind down with a bit of exercise.
Steve Roest is the cofounder and CEO at PocDoc.
