How much do you really know about your health? – Eastbourne practice opens first-ever eHealth Station in the UK - you can check your own health
Hillbrow Health and Wellbeing is the first-ever across the country to have a a MediCubeX – allowing patients and visitors to check their own health for free.
The centre, located on Denton Road, has a unique feature, a self-service eHealth station that takes five minutes available for anyone to use.
The MediCube can measure your body temperature, blood pressure, heart rhythm analysis to identify irregularities through an ECG, body fat and metabolic rate. Soon to be added is a stethoscope, which operates with a laser and artificial intelligence to check the heart and diagnose potential problems.
The pod was created by Finnish medtech company MediCubeX and can be spotted in Sweden, Finland, Germany and Eastbourne. It was installed to fit Hillbrow’s remit into preventative care to help people identify health problems earlier.
It also fits into the government’s cardiovascular framework to try and identify heart problems sooner without further straining the NHS.
Dr Harvey, local GP and CEO of South Downs Health and Care, said: “We wanted to do more work around how we stop people from needing us. With Hillbrow we try to merge healthcare and leisure so the MediCube slots in into that vision.
“We first saw the pod in London Tech Week a few years ago and there are a lot of pods that can check your blood pressure but this one stood out as being a little bit more cutting edge, it’s not just about what it can provide today but what it can provide for tomorrow, like this piece of AI technology using a laser to look at your carotid arteries.
"We saw this as an opportunity to provide something in the community that anyone can come and use.”
Dr Harvey described that routine measurements can be taken before consultations, which helps speed up appointments, supporting memory assessments and improving the patient experience.
He added: “Making this accessible to people in community spaces such as shopping centres would be useful but just these readings on their own is no use, so making it available with something around it, what next if something is found I think is the missing piece.”
The satisfaction for the MediCube from people that have used it in Hillbrow averages at 9.05 out of 10.
Hillbrow is an independent charity, that operates out of the former Brighton University buildings, and its partnered with Wave Active leisure trust. The centre, in the next 12 months, will work with focus groups, with people who are less likely to have their health checked to further help identify and prevent stroke and cardiac arrest.