CheckUp Health - Saving Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Lives

Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people are more likely than Caucasians to have high blood pressure (HBP) or Type2 diabetes (T2D). The UK has ~4 million people with T2D (Diabetes UK, 2020). T2D is up to 6 times more likely in South Asians and 3 times more likely in Africans/Africa-Caribbeans (Ibid). Half of T2D sufferers have HBP, which is 3-4 times more likely to occur in black people of African/Africa-Caribbean descent than white people (Action on Salt, 2020). Health issues resulting from HBP/T2D cost the NHS £2.1bn annually (Public Health England, 2017). Every decade, poor monitoring of HBP/T2D causes the loss of ~7,000 quality adjusted UK life years (PHE, 2017). These losses are unsustainable and need a solution.

Improvements in HBP/T2D prevention and treatment are desperately needed (South Asian Health Foundation, 2020) to avoid BAME deaths and reduce the cost of these diseases to the NHS. A remote monitoring solution for HBP/T2D in the BAME population could address healthcare inequalities exposed by Covid-19; reduce cases requiring intervention (Kim, 2020); and save the NHS millions previously spent on the fallout of poor disease monitoring. Critically, it could save BAME lives.

We offer an alternative solution to the current, high-cost and ineffective approach to HBP/T2D monitoring that is failing the BAME population during the Covid-19 pandemic. Through CheckUp, BAME HBP/T2D patients self-monitor and remotely report to healthcare professionals. CheckUp reduces required GP appointments for BAME HBP/T2D patients, saving the NHS money and reducing the exposure of BAME HBP/T2D to Covid-19 by providing remote monitoring.