Our story Our Story: HeliosCheck.com began with a delay nobody could justify
Ask ten women living with endometriosis how long it took to get a name for their pain
and the answers share a shape: several years, several clinicians, and at least one
appointment where they were told it was normal. UK audits have repeatedly put the
average time from first symptom to confirmed endometriosis diagnosis at close to eight
years. Polycystic ovary syndrome, adenomyosis and early perimenopause follow the same
pattern — common, well described in the literature, and still routinely missed in the
room.
The delay is rarely caused by missing medical knowledge. The guidance exists and it is
public: the
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
publishes it, NICE turns it into pathways, and the
World Health Organization
has spent years documenting how unevenly women’s symptoms are investigated across health
systems. The bottleneck is the appointment itself: eight or nine minutes, one presenting
complaint, and no realistic way to take the kind of history that makes a pattern visible.
So we removed that one constraint and rebuilt the consultation around it. Nothing about
the idea is technologically clever. It is simply what a specialist appointment was always
supposed to be — which is why our process is short to explain
and our list of conditions is long.
What patients say, and who we align with
Reviews are shared with written permission. The bodies below are the published standards our clinicians work to — they are sources, not endorsements of this practice.
Guidance and reference bodies we work to