Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will discuss with the British Medical Association and the British Heart Foundation the diagnostic efficacy of online heart risk calculator applications and whether such applications should be available on the NHS.

In October 2014, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published an updated clinical guideline on lipid modification. This guideline makes recommendations on cardiovascular risk assessment and the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

The guideline recommends that practitioners should use the QRISK2 risk assessment tool to calculate patients’ risk of developing cardiovascular disease. QRISK2 calculates patients’ 10-year risk of developing cardiovascular disease. The tool can be found on line at:

http://www.qrisk.org/

A separate risk calculator has been developed by the Joint British Societies for the prevention of cardiovascular disease (JBS3) which calculates both 10-year and lifetime risk. NICE considered whether lifetime risk calculators should be used but concluded that a 10-year risk calculator is more appropriate in determining when to initiate treatment. Both NICE and JBS3 recommend that a 10-year risk of developing cardiovascular disease should be used to determine whether to treat people with lifestyle advice or drugs. A version of the JSB3 10-year risk calculator can be found on the NHS Choices website:

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/nhs-health-check/pages/check-your-heart-age-tool.aspx