We chat to David Willis, CEO of Tomorrow Cardiovascular

What was the motivation behind the birth of Tomorrow Wellness?

We launched Tomorrow Wellness to empower people to truly safeguard their future heart and cardiovascular health. For the past 25 years, Tomorrow Cardiovascular has supported over 1.3 million patients across the NHS, but this has all too often been after a critical health event like a heart attack, stroke, or aneurysm. Heart and cardiovascular disease still remains the biggest health killer on the planet, affecting men and women equally, but amazingly, 90% of those deaths are preventable. We are determined to open up access to specialist health prevention to reduce this impact.

Health checks have been around for a long time, but they had stopped being relevant and effective, being too clinical, too scary, too general and not detailed enough. For what is the most important aspect of your health? You want to have the reassurance and confidence that a specialist team has had a deep dive into how healthy your heart and cardiovascular system is.

We have combined this specialist approach with the latest evidence, science and technology, and created a relaxing retail ‘spa-like' environment on the high street (Regents Street in Knutsford) to engage with people more positively, changing the relationship with the health check experience. We’ve even gone a step further, building a ‘medical wellness’ membership programme that takes all that data and insight and aligns it with repeat testing and wellness support from dietitians, personal trainers and mental health coaches.

Heart and cardiovascular disease is the biggest threat to our health. Why do you feel more people aren’t discussing this, and what is the method of prevention?

I think the biggest barrier is fear and that people naturally think that it won’t be a problem until later in life. The reality is, that isn’t true. You can see the earliest signs of cardiovascular disease in your 20s, so you can theoretically see into your future by having the Ultimate Health Check. Also, evidence suggests that if you have good heart and cardiovascular health, this gives you a better chance of surviving other illnesses that can affect you earlier in your life.

We have a campaign called ‘3 Billion Beats’, to highlight the importance of this. This is the average number of heart beats in your lifetime. This demonstrates the enormity of what happens over 80 years and if you combine that with the 60,000 miles of blood vessels (arteries and veins) in your body, which is 2.5 times around the planet, you can see why it’s so important to do everything possible to focus on this area of your health today to protect and optimise your tomorrow.

And the fear factor, this is why we have invested in offering a positive, calming environment to change the interaction with advanced health testing. Being on the high street and having the design we have, has literally changed people's lives already. Half of our clients are walk-ins, and more often than not heart and cardiovascular health is already really important to them, but they’ve never felt comfortable about taking action and couldn’t find a service that fits. This open accessible approach is key to advanced proactive testing and health prevention.

We are also working hard to bring to life the stories of people visiting. Our community is anyone who recognises that this is such an important aspect of their health: from the person who just wakes up one day and wants to make a change, or the person whose dad had a heart attack, mum had a stroke, or has been newly diagnosed with raised cholesterol or blood pressure and doesn’t know what to do. Women are increasingly visiting after a baby or during the different stages of life, and athletes from amateur to professionals too. All stories that have meaningful important emotional reasons behind them.

How do you help your clients gain a better understanding of cardiovascular health?

We have designed the service to have the biggest impact on you, changing the relationship you have with your heart and cardiovascular health. All the evidence tells us that the bigger the impression this has, the longer-lasting emotional change you will have to positively impact it.

There are multiple layers to the experience of the Ultimate Health Check at Tomorrow Wellness, which you can personalise around the issues that are important to you. The first is that you are taken on a journey of 10 of the latest advanced tests, all under 2 hours, specifically chosen by our cardiovascular specialists. This data and insight are fed back to you ‘live’ during each of the tests so you can learn as much as you want, as well as removing those horrible silent moments often experienced when you have tests elsewhere. You are given access to hundreds of biomarkers linked to your health and longevity, specifically focused on heart and cardiovascular health: blood lab results, artery imaging, strength testing, body composition, stress ECG and VO2 Max all developed into your personalised detailed report and action plan that you form with your specialist scientist and doctor. And finally, and most importantly, you are left with confidence and reassurance that there is nothing critically happening, or if there is, we can quickly help get it sorted, plus the absolute empowerment of having all this insight about your health to track for the future and have the control to do something about it.

Some people may be anxious about visiting your studio or are time-poor. You offer an ‘Insight’ package. which is an ‘at home’ heart and cardiovascular health check service. What can people expect from this?

Our ‘Insight’ package is designed to give people initial understanding and awareness of their heart and cardiovascular health status, being convenient and accessible from anywhere across the UK. Although we have a lot of people travel some distance to us in Knutsford, we are seeing increasing demand nationally and this gives people the opportunity to start that journey.

There are many ‘at home’ testing services; however, these are often general testing, not specific on the most important aspect of your health, plus the results are never reviewed by a specialist. This is where we are significantly different, giving you the confidence that your results are being looked at and that you have a personalised action plan to know what to do about.

What long-term support do you offer clients?

This is where our ‘Optimise’ programme fits. It’s the Ultimate Specialist Health Tracker. We developed this as clients really wanted longer-term support of repeat testing to track their progress beyond their wearables, while being supported with their diet, physical fitness and mental fitness too.

The Optimise packages start with all the detailed testing, whereby a personalised action plan is developed in conjunction with yourself, your specialists and the wider wellness team. You’ll then have the opportunity to have multiple appointments with our wellness experts and then return every six months for repeat testing to see your progress.

‘Insight’ start your journey from £299.

‘Explore’ The Ultimate Specialist Health Check starts from £1,199

‘Optimise’ The Medical Wellness Programme starts at £149 per month.

tomorrowwellness.com

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