HeliosCheck.com FAQ: honest answers about online gynecology care

HeliosCheck.com is a consultant-led gynecology and women’s health consultancy that works online. It does two things. The first is a paid consultation: 30 to 45 minutes with a consultant gynecologist by video or telephone, followed by a written plan you keep and 14 days of follow-up messaging with the same clinician. The second is a library of health information — our conditions pages — written by those clinicians and checked against published guidance from bodies such as ACOG, RCOG, NICE and the NHS.

What it is not is a subscription, a symptom checker or an app. You can read how it works in full before committing to anything.

A named consultant gynecologist — not a triage nurse, not a generalist, not an automated assistant. You see who you are booked with before you pay, and that same clinician writes your plan and answers your follow-up messages for the fortnight afterwards.

Our clinicians are Dr A. Whitfield, Dr N. Adeyemi and Dr S. Moreau. Each holds specialist registration in obstetrics and gynecology [GMC number to be added for each clinician before launch], and their areas of focus are set out on our about page, so you can be matched to the right specialist rather than the next one free.

No, and it is not built to. HeliosCheck.com is a specialist layer that sits alongside your usual care: a longer appointment with a gynecologist when you need one, and a written summary you can hand to whoever holds your full medical record.

We do not provide emergency care, booked maternity care or antenatal scanning, and we do not take over prescribing for unrelated conditions. One section of every plan is written specifically for your own doctor, in clinical language, ready to forward. Where something belongs with a hospital team, we say so during the appointment rather than in a footnote afterwards — our services page sets out the full scope.

Start on the contact page. You choose the type of consultation, pick a time that suits you, and pay before the slot is held. You then complete an intake form — ten to fifteen minutes, saved as you go, so you can finish it in two sittings if that is easier.

Your clinician reads that form before you meet, which is the reason the appointment can open with your actual question instead of with your date of birth. How it works walks through each stage, including exactly what to have in front of you on the day.

The booking calendar shows the slots that are genuinely open, and that is the most honest answer we can give — lead times move with demand and with which specialist your question needs. We would rather show you live availability than quote an average that turns out to be wrong on the day you are reading this.

What we will not do is present ourselves as an urgent service. If your symptoms are severe or sudden — heavy bleeding, severe pelvic pain, pain with faintness in early pregnancy — an online appointment is the wrong tool. Read the urgent care list and seek same-day help instead.

Nothing beyond a browser. The link we send opens on a laptop, tablet or phone, and a short check tests your camera and microphone before you join. There is no app to install, no plug-in, and no separate account to create.

If your connection is unreliable, or a video call is simply not something you want, ask for a telephone consultation instead. It costs the same and, for most questions, works just as well. A private room helps; headphones are a reasonable substitute when privacy at home is difficult, and it is worth saying so on the intake form.

Yes to all three. A partner, family member, carer or advocate is welcome on the call, and plenty of people find the written plan easier to act on when someone else heard the conversation too.

Interpreters — spoken language or sign — are arranged by us at no extra cost, but we need to know when you book rather than on the day. The same applies to extra appointment time, a large-print summary, or anything else that would make the appointment usable for you. Our accessibility statement lists what is available and how to ask for it.

More than most people expect. A great deal of gynecology is history-led: the pattern of a cycle, the point at which it changed, what makes pain better or worse, how symptoms sit against your obstetric history and your current medication. Given 30 to 45 minutes and a completed intake form, that history carries most of the diagnostic weight.

We can also review results and scan reports you already hold, reconcile medicines, explain what a guideline genuinely recommends rather than what a forum says it does, and build a plan with its trade-offs stated. ACOG’s patient FAQs are a useful companion to that conversation.

A pelvic, speculum or breast examination. A cervical screening test — the sample has to be taken in person, and the NHS cervical screening pages explain how that works. A coil or implant fitting or removal. An ultrasound, biopsy or colposcopy. Any procedure at all. Emergency care of any kind.

When your question needs one of those, we say so during the appointment, write it into your summary with the degree of urgency attached, and tell you what to book and where. Reaching that conclusion does not cost you a second fee — see what we cover.

Heavy, painful or irregular periods; PCOS; endometriosis and adenomyosis; fibroids and ovarian cysts; recurrent thrush, bacterial vaginosis and recurrent urinary tract infections; contraception review; fertility questions and recurrent early pregnancy loss; perimenopause and menopause, including HRT decisions; pelvic floor symptoms and prolapse; vulval skin conditions; and postmenopausal bleeding, which we treat as urgent by default.

Each has its own section on our conditions page, including the investigations usually offered and what the evidence actually supports. If your question is not on that list, ask through contact before booking — we would rather turn an appointment down than take a fee for one we cannot answer well.

Sometimes, and sometimes not — and we will always be explicit about which. Some conditions can be identified from history and existing results with reasonable confidence. Others need an examination, imaging or tissue, and no honest clinician can confirm them through a screen.

Where we can only reach a working impression, your plan says so in those words, states what would confirm or overturn it, and lists the tests that would settle the question. We do not guarantee outcomes, promise cures, or describe a treatment as certain to work. Our medical disclaimer sets out the limits of this service in full, and it is worth two minutes of your time.

Often, yes. Where a medicine is clinically appropriate and safe to issue without an examination, the prescription forms part of your written plan — contraception reviews, HRT, treatment for heavy bleeding and many infection treatments commonly fall into that group.

There are firm exceptions. We do not prescribe controlled drugs remotely. We do not prescribe where the diagnosis needs examining first, or where starting a medicine requires monitoring we cannot arrange for you. And we will not repeat a prescription indefinitely without review. If we decline, you are told why in plain terms, and what the safe route is instead.

We can request them in writing, with the clinical detail a laboratory or imaging provider needs — what is being looked for, and why it matters. What has to happen locally is the sample or the scan itself, because someone has to take blood from your arm or hold the probe.

Two honest caveats. Whether a given provider accepts a private written request varies by country, insurer and provider, so check before you travel to an appointment. And a result is only useful once it is interpreted: send yours through your follow-up thread and the same clinician will read it with you.

We write a referral letter or clinical summary addressed to your own doctor or to a named service, setting out the history, the findings, our impression and what we are asking for. That letter is usually what makes an onward appointment happen quickly, because the receiving clinician is not starting from a blank page.

What we cannot do is add you to a public waiting list directly. In most health systems, the NHS included, a referral runs through the doctor with whom you are registered. We give you the document that makes that conversation short — the sequence is described on how it works.

Not by default. We do not video or audio record appointments. Audio and video travel over an encrypted connection and are not stored afterwards.

If there were ever a reason to record — a teaching request, for instance — we would ask for your written consent first, on each occasion, and declining would change nothing whatsoever about the care you receive. What is kept is what your clinician writes: the notes, your intake form, your plan and your follow-up messages. Together those form your medical record, and our privacy policy explains how they are held and protected.

Your record is visible to your treating clinician and to the small number of staff who maintain the records system under contractual confidentiality obligations. It is held on encrypted systems and retained for [retention period to be confirmed before launch], after which it is securely deleted.

You can request a copy of everything we hold, ask for factual errors to be corrected, and withdraw consent for non-clinical uses such as marketing email at any time. Cookies and analytics are handled separately in our cookie policy; the full legal detail sits in the privacy policy.

Nothing goes to an employer, insurer, school, relative or partner without your written instruction — including confirmation that you are a patient at all.

The exceptions are the ones every clinical service carries, and we would rather state them here than bury them: a court order, a specific legal reporting duty, or a serious and immediate risk to your safety or someone else’s. If any of those ever applied, we would tell you what had to be shared and with whom, unless we were legally prohibited from doing so. The terms of service and the privacy policy set this out formally.

One flat fee per consultation, shown on the booking page before you enter any payment details. We keep that figure in a single place rather than repeating it across the site, because a price copied into twenty pages is a price that will eventually be wrong on nineteen of them.

The fee covers the intake review, the 30 to 45 minute appointment, your written plan, and 14 days of follow-up messaging with the same clinician. There is no subscription, no per-message charge, and no bill that quietly grows once you are already in the appointment.

Rescheduling is free up to 24 hours before your appointment, as often as you genuinely need to. Cancel more than 24 hours ahead and the fee is refunded in full.

Inside 24 hours, or if you do not attend, the fee is not normally refundable — the time was held for you and the intake review has already been done. Life being what it is, tell us what happened through contact and we will look at it properly rather than hide behind a policy. If we cancel, or the technology fails at our end, you are rebooked at no cost or refunded in full, whichever you prefer. The terms of service carry the formal wording.

HeliosCheck.com is a self-pay service: you pay at the point of booking, and we do not bill insurers directly [direct insurer arrangements to be confirmed before launch].

We can issue an itemised receipt showing the date, the clinician, the consultation type and the fee, which is what most policies ask for when you claim afterwards. Whether your particular policy reimburses an online specialist consultation is a question only your insurer can answer, so ask them before you book rather than after. We will not tell you a claim is likely to succeed when we have no way of knowing whether it is.