LABOUR will embark on a series of reforms this week designed to implement Gordon Brown’s promise of a more personalised National Health Service.

Alan Johnson, the health secretary, will announce that health checks will be made available to the over-40s, allowing for screening for heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease and the risk of strokes.

Meanwhile Lord Darzi, the health minister, is studying a possible “voucher scheme”, in which those with a chronic illness will be allocated a budget for their treatment and given some choice in where and how they are treated.

A third Labour reform, long planned, also comes into force this week, permitting patients to choose where they have non-emergency surgery.

The outcome of the changes will be seen as a test of Brown’s ability to implement Blairite reforms of the public services, which he has surprised many in his party by continuing. In education he has already signalled an expansion of academies, a pet project of his predecessor.

Checking the whole population from middle age is a long-held ambition of Brown’s.

Research indicates that screening would be cost-effective by identifying individuals at risk of illness and preventing them from becoming a burden to the NHS.

Those at risk will be told how to avert illness by following a healthier diet, giving up smoking and taking more exercise. Individuals may also be prescribed medicine such as statins to lower cholesterol, or aspirin to thin the blood.

Every year in Britain 275,000 people have a heart attack and almost half are fatal. Strokes claim 70,000 lives a year.

Research at Birmingham University has shown that an estimated 3m people not taking medicine would benefit from statins, aspirin or blood-pressure drugs. Prescribing the drugs to those at risk could halve the chance of heart attacks and strokes.

Some doctors have even recommended a “polypill” of five medicines that could prevent 80% of strokes and 90% of heart attacks.

Dr Tom Marshall, senior lecturer in public health at Birmingham University, said: “Without treatment we would expect these 3m people to suffer 60,000 heart attacks and strokes every year. We have a duty to make them aware if there is a treatment from which they could benefit.”

Brown first raised the prospect of health “MoTs” for all patients in a speech at King’s College London in January.

He said: “The NHS of the future will do more than just treat patients who are ill — it will be an NHS offering prevention as well.”

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