At Health Prem, we are committed to informing and empowering people with professional healthcare information, giving everyone back ownership of their health. Our mission is to build the first patient-focused platform that allows anyone to access professional grade healthcare information written for everyone.

Welcome to Health Prem!

To tell you about Health Prem, I would first need to tell you about my own health journey. I am rolling into my late 30s and have always been relatively healthy apart from one issue I have had since my teenager years.

I occasionally choke on my food!

My parents would tell me to chew my food more or not to not speak while I eat (do they not all say that?).

By my late 20s, the struggle of choking on the occasional meal would become such a frequent event that it was having a massive impact on my day to day life. Eating in a restaurant or in a public place turned into a huge fear of mine. Knowing any mouthful of food could cause a public scene with me in a blind panic seeking out the closest restroom to unblock my throat.

I desperately needed to get help!

First protocol was to contact my GP. Luckily, my job came with the perk of private health insurance, so with a GP referral my dream of going out for a nice meal anxiety free was in sight. Or so I thought.

For different reasons my policy would not cover any investigative procedures and it was now back to the NHS, which I knew would not be a swift solution. Years would pass then into the Covid pandemic and I was still no further into a diagnosis, never mind any sort of recovery. In fact, the choking was getting worse.

Fast forward to now and I am delighted to tell you my life is fully reset. I have returned to a “normal” life where going out for a meal is no longer mission impossible. I do not choke when I eat.

When I did finally get to see NHS consultants and specialists (after a number of years), they did an amazing job and I couldn’t have been happier with the NHS staff that I encountered.

I have had both fantastic and poor experiences in both the private side of UK healthcare and the NHS. Health Prem was built from my whole experience of trying to improve my health - initially investigating my ailment, then navigating the minefield of private health insurers, followed by a lengthy path of going between private healthcare and the NHS.

My own experiences have forged the content that Health Prem reports on:

• Informative, unbiased patient-focused ailment articles

• Easy-to-digest information surrounding peer reviewed studies and clinical research

• Reporting on the current NHS landscape and private healthcare industry in the UK

I hope the information on this site can help people.

Pete McLachlan

Founder of Health Prem