In this edition, we catch up with Steve Roest, CEO at Pocdoc. PocDoc's 'Healthy Heart Check' smartphone-based technology can be used to provide patients with a full cholesterol profile check - at home, at work, or in their communities.
Current job role: CEO
Name of innovation: PocDoc 'Healthy Heart Check'
Tell us about your innovation in a sentence.
PocDoc’s Healthy Heart Check enables people to undertake a comprehensive cholesterol profile from their smartphone, directly into the NHS app, which includes: BMI score, calculated heart age, and a ten-year risk assessment for heart attacks or strokes - all in under 10 minutes.
What was the ‘lightbulb’ moment?
My passion for this business stems from a deeply personal experience. When my dad suffered a major stroke caused by undiagnosed cardiovascular disease (CVD), it was a wake-up call. I realised that it not only had an emotional impact on my family and I, it had a significant financial impact on the healthcare system too.
The cost to the NHS for looking after him likely exceeded seven figures - an excessive cost that could have been avoided with early detection and treatment. The World Heart Federation reports that around 80% of CVD, including heart disease and stroke, are preventable.
This realisation drove home the critical importance of early diagnostics, particularly digital tools that make screening more accessible. This personal journey ultimately led to the creation of PocDoc, a British born digital diagnostics company designed to address the growing burden of chronic diseases, including CVD, which affects over 7.4 million people in the UK.
PocDoc's Healthy Heart Check aims to increase access to cardiovascular disease screenings to help ease the pressure on the overwhelmed healthcare systems in the UK. It is estimated that each digital health check could save 20 minutes of NHS time — freeing up thousands of GP appointments and helping cut NHS waiting times.
We’ve been delighted with our growth to date and the support we’ve received from our investors - which includes the only NHS-anchored venture capital fund. In addition to the NHS, PocDoc has nationwide partnerships with some of the largest community pharmacy chains including: Asda, Well Pharmacy, and the UK’s biggest online pharmacy, Pharmacy2U. Our Healthy Heart Check is a fundamental tool in the preventative care journey.
What three pieces of advice would you give budding innovators?
1. Begin with a valid problem statement that can turn into a mission.
History is littered with health technology innovations that have no buy-in from customers because they solve problems people don’t have or won’t pay for. Always remain focused on developing a product or service that genuinely meets the needs of your target audience, whether that’s for patients, clinicians, or another community. To achieve this, involve them at every stage of the process. Their feedback will not only ensure your offering is relevant and effective but will also help you identify areas for improvement.
2. Be prepared to adapt to changes within the industry.
The healthcare sector is constantly evolving, so it’s essential to stay informed and up to date. Be open to feedback and ready to adjust your overall strategy in response. Embracing change and listening to those around you will help ensure your approach remains relevant and effective in an ever-changing landscape.
3. Be humble and seek to learn.
You will find healthcare is full of people who care about making an impact and want to help others. If you are humble and ask for guidance, people will go out of their way to help you.
What’s been your toughest obstacle?
Bringing the physical, digital, clinical, and interoperability together with the NHS system in a highly scalable, usable platform has been one of the major challenges. Our Microfluidic Assay Platform is proprietary, so we knew keeping operations and manufacturing in-house would work best for us.
From day one, we set out to fully understand the unmet clinical needs in cardio, metabolic, and renal disease prevention. Our goal was to address these entire needs, not just a fraction of them. This involved hundreds of hours of talking with clinicians and patients before we even started development.
We also spent a lot of time understanding why screening outside of a GP surgery hadn’t scaled effectively. We realised that if we could create a digital-first technology that delivered equivalent clinical value and interoperability as the NHS System gets from GP-led screening, we would be able to unlock community, workplace, and home screening for three of the largest cost centres for any healthcare system.
The other major obstacle has been keeping up with demand for the Healthy Heart Check - which is a good problem to have!
What’s been your innovator journey highlight?
There are highlights at every stage. Introducing our Healthy Heart Check to market was huge, as was creating an amazing team across several specialties that can deliver for our customers, day in and day out.
Building relationships with the teams at Health Innovation North East and North Cumbria and NHS North East and North Cumbria, who were the first to roll us out as part of an Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) funded project.
Seeing people use the Healthy Heart Check in every UK region is fantastic! It’s always nice to receive patients' and clinicians' feedback, showing we are having a real impact on our overall mission of helping identify people at risk of chronic illnesses earlier, so we can treat and/or prevent their condition, before it develops.
A major highlight of my innovator journey to date has been reading the results of our Health Economic Analysis, co-authored with the NHS. It shows the huge economic benefits of using PocDoc.
What is the best part of your job now?
The most rewarding aspect of my role is witnessing the positive impact the Healthy Heart Check has on patients' lives. It is incredibly fulfilling to see how many high-risk individuals we’ve been able to reach - many of whom were previously unaware of their underlying health conditions.
Through these checks, we’ve empowered individuals to take proactive steps in managing their health, which is a truly powerful outcome. The testimonials we receive reflect the value of our work, highlighting the tangible difference we are making. They not only validate our efforts but also serve as a constant source of motivation for both me and my dedicated team, many of whom have been personally affected by CVD. This personal connection fuels our collective drive to ensure the business's success.
As we continue to expand, our goal is to make these life-changing, accessible health checks available to even more people, helping to prevent heart-related issues before they arise and improving overall public health on a larger scale.
If you were in charge of the NHS and care system, what’s the one thing you’d do to speed up health innovation?
I’d like to see a stronger collaboration between the NHS, its clinicians, innovators, and the investors who fund them - whether at the early, mid, or later stages of venture capital. We’ve been very lucky to have had such success in raising capital, and our investors are deeply aware of both the value and the challenges of the UK healthcare system.
More broadly, there is a growing lack of understanding from institutional investors about how the NHS works and what types of business can succeed. What investors don’t understand, they view as risk, and what they view as risky, they won’t fund.
The NHS is also frustrated that businesses are building products and technology that, while “innovative”, don’t solve clinical problems in their entirety or are no better than the incumbent process. In this situation, the NHS won’t adopt these solutions.
There needs to be a recognition that this is a symbiotic relationship - if investors know what the single largest customer in the UK will buy, they can adjust their decisions accordingly. If the NHS can guide investments into innovations it knows will scale, adoption will go much faster.
A typical day for you would include…
I’m an early riser - usually up between 4am and 5am - driven by excitement for what we’re doing and the huge amount we must deliver in 2025. The first two hours of my day are focused on tasks that require deep concentration. However, if I’m training for a sporting event, I might split that time by doing an hour of focused work followed by an hour at the gym. Then it’s breakfast with my three children before getting them off to school and nursery.
Mornings are spent catching up with my key team leads - Commercial, Marketing, Operations, Tech/Product, and R&D - while afternoons are dedicated to meetings with major clients, both existing and potential. Once a week, I sleep on a camp bed in the HQ factory, working late with the night shift operations team and then having breakfast with the early shift team. Every other Tuesday, I host my live show, HealthTech Hour, which now has 300,000 streams a month. I like to be well-prepared for it! I work until 6pm, then unwind with some exercise.
Right now, I’m really into jujitsu - I’m a white belt, and my goal for 2025 is to get close to blue.
