Gordon Brown today boasted he would make health screening available to all, as he promised to reform and renew the National Health Service for the next decade.

The Prime Minister unveiled his vision for the future of the NHS, in which he said patients would take greater responsibility for monitoring their own health, for delaying the onset of illness, and for helping to direct their own treatment when they did become unwell.

He illustrated his point by describing a heart disease patient called Robbie whom he met earlier in the year, who weighed himself and took his own blood pressure and emailed the results to his GP.

The rise in patient power would be backed by a range of “private healthcare-style” screenings on offer at GP surgeries and high street health centres, intended to identify those at greatest risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease, so that the conditions could be treated at the earliest opportunity, said Mr Brown.

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Wider screening has often been proposed but on close examination has been shown to be poor medicine or a poor use of resources

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He said that this preventative approach to health care was essential to reshape the NHS to meet the challenges of a population which was getting older and fatter, as people led longer but not healthier lives.

“The NHS of the future will do more than just treat patients who are ill – it will be an NHS offering prevention as well,” Mr Brown said in a speech to healthcare professionals at Kings College in London.

“The NHS of the future will be more than a universal service – it will be a personal service too. It will not be the NHS of the passive patient – the NHS of the future will be one of patient power, patients engaged and taking greater control over their own health and their healthcare too... over time, everyone in England will have access to the right preventative health check-up.

“And so if the NHS is to change like this - to meet the challenges of 21st century healthcare and our 21st century lives - we will have to embrace even deeper and wider reform.”

Mr Brown said there would be a focus on patients whose lifestyle choices – smoking, drinking and above all obesity – made them unwell. In a stick-and-carrot approach, patients who failed to co-operate with the NHS by failing to keep appointments would be penalised by losing their eligibility to waiting time guarantees, he added.

Sections of the community will be invited by age, gender, postcode, family history, height and weight to take part in the tests. Mr Brown will say that services such as blood, fat and sugar tests, heart monitoring and, in some cases, ultrasounds, should be available free at GP surgeries and even private clinics "when you want and need them", rather than just in hospitals.

The reforms would happen in parallel with changes to food labelling, greater access to sport and exercise, and new restrictions on advertising unhealthy foods. Social care would also be shaken up, and a green paper would be launched on how it was funded. The first screenings will be available by the end of this year as part of Mr Brown’s promise to make the NHS his highest priority. Every man reaching the age of 65 is to be offered an ultrasound test for abdominal aortic aneurysms – in which the body’s main artery becomes swollen and can rupture. An operation can correct this if it is detected early.

The Prime Minister said that the NHS would continue to fund medical advances that allow diseases to be more easily diagnosed at earlier stages. Ministers believe that the ability to intervene early will save costly treatments later when the conditions become more serious.

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