See how Gregg solved his persistent health puzzle with a simple blood test using Digicare+

I’m Gregg Parker, I live over in Redditch with my partner Kate. We’ve got a little girl, Frankie, who’s eight, and yeah that’s my family.

I work as a sales manager in mortgage services which I’ve done for nearly twenty years now.

I’d been having problems with my foot for a few years, getting progressively worse. It was getting to a point where roughly every three months it would keep me off my feet for about a week.

And at the time I was going to the GP to try and work out what was wrong with it ultimately. Initially they thought it could be illfitting shoes, but obviously the pain kept coming back. They sent me for xrays but that again didn’t return any results and they were looking for kind of an underlying break or fracture or something along those lines, that wasn’t the case.

So, yes, when I wasn’t getting any immediate answers on the problem with my foot, I remembered through the Aviva protection cover, that I could go through the annual health check.

So yes, it was really easy to order the health check through the app, on doing so I think it asked for a couple of basic measurements and then I would send off for the kit and it arrived within a couple of days.

The test itself was pretty straightforward. It was just a pin prick on the finger, drawing a few drops of blood, which I didn’t find too bad to do at all and then that was sent back obviously for analysis. And two or three days later I got like a PDF on an email, and you can access the same thing through the app with the results. There was different things they were testing for, and one of those was gout. Which was ultimately is what it highlighted in me being outside of the normal range. It also gave me the option of having an online consultation with a GP to discuss the results of the test.

The consultation itself was a video call, so it felt really personable, and really easy to do. So that was about a day or two after I’d had the results back and I was having that consultation with that GP.

We all know what it’s like trying to get a GP appointment these days and that’s nothing I had to worry about, so it made it really simple.

And through conversation with that GP, and what I was telling him about the issues with my foot, and the results of the test they then advised to return to my GP with that information, which ultimately got me the right diagnosis.

So I guess in terms of the DigiCare app, these things would cost a fair amount of money if paid for privately. Having used it I suppose the ease, the experience, the quickness of getting the results through and how easy that was to do made it a really simple process.

So yes, I’ll be looking to do the health check annually moving forward. I have just done the recent one and obviously I guess because of the medication I’m on it was pleasing to see the gout was within the normal range, so obviously the medication is doing its job.

Without the benefit of the DigiCare app and the results of the health check, I guess the problems with the foot would have continued, possibly even got worse, and I’m not really sure if I’d have got to this point today, whether I’d have had a result, an outcome, and it would have started to impact on being able to work. It seems quite a small thing, but quite a life changing thing if you consider where it could have gone.

For more information on Aviva protection products and the wellbeing services available, visit us online or speak to your financial adviser or your employer. Individual

The Annual Health Check and Digital GP service are wellbeing services available with the Aviva Digicare+ app that is accessible with Aviva Protection products, and the Aviva DigiCare+ Workplace app that is accessible with Aviva Group Protection products.

The apps and services are provided by Square Health. They are noncontractual benefits that Aviva can withdrawal at any time.

Terms and residency restrictions apply.

It takes Aviva.

Aviva Life & Pensions UK Limited. Registered in England No 3253947. Aviva, Wellington Row, York, YO90 1WR. Authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. Firm Reference Number 185896. Member of the Association of British Insurers. Wellbeing services are not insurance products and are not Aviva: Public authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority or the Prudential Regulation Authority.