Hamish Grierson, Eliot Brooks and Tom Livesey: Thriva

Hamish Grierson, 33, Eliot Brooks, 27 and Tom Livesey, 29
Company: Thriva
Web: www.thriva.co

Most of us know that getting a regular health test is a makes sense. Unfortunately, because health systems aren’t setup to make that easy, the vast majority of the population choose to ‘live with it’. Which means we live in blissful ignorance of what’s going on in our bodies, putting our long-term health in jeopardy.

Thriva is on a mission: To provide the insights that help us to understand how to live more of life at 100%.  The company’s launch product enables customers to easily and affordably take a regular finger-prick blood test from home, giving them the means to identify long-term risks as well as vitamin or mineral deficiencies which may be slowing them down day-to-day.

But that’s just the start. Soon, Thriva customers will be able to explore a broad range of health areas from stress levels to female fertility.

Test kits are mailed out as soon as the user completes a simple online form, and returned via freepost to Thriva’s partner lab. There the results are analysed before being commented on by and NHS-trained GP. The results are available to the customer via their personalised health dashboard, enabling them to track their markers against indicators for a range of common conditions.

Thriva’s offering has been streamlined since the company launched in June 2016; now, the company offers a range of subscription packages, which can be personalised to each user and the number of tests they wish to perform.

This highly sophisticated offering is the work of three men, Hamish Grierson, Tom Livesey and Elliot Brooks, all of whom were named among our ‘Five to Watch’ last year. Yet it is the latter, or rather his experience, which has had a defining influence on the company’s vision.

Brooks regularly has to get blood tests to monitor an inherited condition that means he has to keep a check on cholesterol levels. He says the whole process of booking an appointment or visiting a blood clinic felt outdated and impersonal, not to mention time-consuming – he regularly had to book time off work to get checked up. Thriva is a direct response to that ordeal.

The founders aren’t against Britain’s health services, far from it; instead want to work alongside it and free up resources by providing a key service. Indeed they have launched a pilot collaboration programme with the Royal Brompton Hospital and proudly display the NHS insignia as a charter mark on their website.

Customers, they say, fall into two large groups (with a degrees of overlap). The first are essentially looking for peace of mind about long-term health and to identify any issues early. The second are more broadly interested in self-improvement and personal development and appreciate that understanding and optimising health is a huge part of the overall picture.

This audience is potentially massive and plans are also in place to launch Thriva´s own-brand supplements as a consultation service, ensuring they can treat problems as well as flag them.

Like all of our Young Guns, the Thriva trio have taken a leap and got in early with their business. All they ask is that the rest of us do the same with our bodies and enjoy the feeling ‘blissfully informed’, rather than ignorant.