Heatherwick Studio has designed a health device, Early, a non-invasive, at-home urine test which measures people’s biomarkers from the comfort of their home.
Biomarkers give people greater knowledge about their health and can indicate early signs of serious conditions.
The company says that too many serious diseases are identified too late, when opportunities for early intervention have been missed, a reason for this being that health screening often happens reactively rather than routinely, after symptoms appear.
Early’s co-founders D‑J Collins and Thomas Heatherwick say they have been driven to make health testing simpler, more accessible and better suited to real human behaviour, by bringing it into the home.
The device screens for biomarkers associated with diabetes, pre-diabetes, kidney disease, cardiovascular disease and some cancers of the urinary tract and bladder. Heatherwick Studio says Early has been developed by a ‘world-class’ team of scientists, engineers and designers, including Professor Mark Emberton, Early’s Chief Medical Officer and the former Dean of Medical Sciences at University College London.
Heatherwick Studio says that more information about the design and how the device works will be revealed in early August.
Thomas Heatherwick, co-founder of Early and founder of Heatherwick Studio said: “We’re so used to the idea that detecting serious illnesses only happens after inconvenient and uncomfortable tests in hospitals, GP surgeries and clinics, after we’ve put off testing for too long.
“What if we looked at things the other way round? At home every day we produce two litres of information about our health, and then we flush it away down our toilets. But why have we seen urine only as waste, when it’s actually full of precious information about our health?
“Early began with a simple question: could the future of healthcare be less about hospital visits and syringes, and instead about forming better relationships with our own bodies, by painlessly testing ourselves on a regular basis, right in our own bathrooms?
“Early is using the powerful combination of innovative research into the biomarkers of serious illnesses in urine, combined with beautifully designed hardware, to replace anxiety with understanding, and give people a simple way to keep track of their health at home, before small problems become life-changing ones.”
D-J Collins, Co-Founder and CEO of Early: “Far too many of us know someone who died too young from cancer or another chronic disease. Disease is so much easier to treat, and sometimes even cure, when we find it early. The problem is we don’t have simple ways to do that.
“The annual health check misses or misinterprets things, and most people don’t want regular blood tests. The only way to detect disease earlier is to bring screening into the home and make it as simple as brushing your teeth. If we want people to test regularly, it has to be magically easy.
“This is the world we’re building with Early. Regular screening for multiple biomarkers in urine, starting with some of today’s most serious diseases.
“In years to come, we’ll look back and think we were nuts to wait for symptoms before seeing a doctor. Our homes will become the starting point for everyone’s health.”
