Calculator Which Predicts When You Might Suffer Heart Attack Launched

The NHS has launched a new online application that predicts when you might suffer a heart attack.

The online tool leads individuals through a variety of lifestyle questions, such as age, height, weight, smoking history, and family and personal medical history, in order to determine their chances of a heart attack.

Medical professionals hope the calculator, developed with NHS Choices, Public Heath England and the British Heart Foundation, will become a useful method to prompt individuals into changing unhealthy lifestyles by stressing how many years they have before a heart attack.

The app, which can only be completed by persons born before 1985, asks individuals whether they know their cholesterol and blood pressure levels, as well as citing if they have diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic kidney disease or atrial fibrillation.

But some researchers have warned that the blunt tool generalizes and will distress many with dreadful predictions on results (such as family history) outside their control. They also caution the app may push thousands into taking medication out of fear.