Thousands of people in the North East will be among the very first in the country to be able to check their cholesterol levels at home as part of a special pilot study.
10,000 people in our region will be part of a pilot of the PocDoc Lipid Test - which uses a finger prick blood test, a lateral flow device (similar to those we are used to seeing in Covid-19 tests) and a special app to determine if someone has high cholesterol.
If so, the app gives someone's results almost immediately, speeding up diagnosis and helping people to get NHS treatment faster. The idea is that this will also free up time for GPs. The trail is taking place here as there are at least 430,000 people living with cardiovascular disease across the North East and North Cumbria - though it's thought many more are undiagnosed - while 6,700 people die of this each year. That's the equivalent to around one in four deaths.
