OMED Health Partners with Aviva to Support the Digestive Health of Employees
Published on: 23 Oct 2025
- 75 Aviva employees to gain pilot access to doctor-led OMED Health Plans, which include the use of the OMED Health Breath Analyzer and mobile app
- Collaboration will evaluate the impact of the OMED solution on the digestive health and quality of life of participants in a workplace setting
Cambridge, UK, October 23, 2025: OMED Health (“OMED”), a UK-based business pioneering non-invasive breath analysis for gut health and part of Owlstone Medical (“Owlstone”), the global leader in Breath Biopsy® for applications in early disease detection and precision medicine, today announced a pilot as part of its longstanding collaboration with Aviva, the UK’s leading diversified insurer.
The pilot, involving 75 Aviva employees, intends to demonstrate the value of the OMED Health solution in a workplace setting by addressing the significant impact of gastrointestinal (GI) conditions on employee health and workplace productivity. The study is expected to be completed within six months.
The pilot group of Aviva employees will receive access to OMED Health Plans (1), a CQC-registered service that guides individuals through personalized care pathways, including treatments and custom diet plans and supported by consultations with a licensed Owlstone medical doctor, to help them to gain control over their GI symptoms or conditions. Each participant will also receive an OMED Health Breath Analyzer, a handheld medical device that accurately measures gases related to the microbiome, and a linked mobile app (2) which collects vital symptom and dietary data. The Analyzer will be used to track progress through the pilot, and surveys will be provided to participants prior to and following the pilot to determine the direct impact of the Health Plan on their gut health and quality of life.
Functional gut disorders such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), Intestinal Methanogen Overgrowth (IMO), and food intolerances affect up to 1 in 8 people globally (3), and in the UK alone 17% of adults have IBS or another form of GI disease (4). Unfortunately, while there are many potential causes, symptoms can be non-specific and so many suffer for years without a clear resolution, impacting every aspect of normal life at home and at work.
The broader implications of poor digestive health are significant. In the UK, direct costs of IBS alone are estimated at over £2 billion (5) per year with indirect costs twice this amount (6). Gut health issues are also a leading cause of workplace absenteeism, with sufferers requiring almost twice as many days off work, and even when present average productivity is 30% lower (6). Addressing these conditions by helping those living with digestive disease to find and fix their specific problems is therefore crucial both to support employees and to reduce the economic impact.
This initiative strongly supports the “Fit for the Future: 10 Year Health Plan for England” (7), which outlines three radical shifts for the NHS: from sickness to prevention, from analogue to digital, and from hospital to community. By improving employee health and reducing absenteeism, adoption of the OMED Health solution has the potential to contribute to the broader NHS ambition of enhancing productivity and supporting economic growth, while reducing the burden on the NHS by decreasing unnecessary visits to traditional healthcare settings through at-home diagnosis and management of disease.
Aviva Ventures, Aviva Investors’ venture capital arm, first invested in Owlstone Medical in 2017, with Aviva Investors also having made an additional investment through its dedicated Venture & Growth Capital strategy, reflecting the company’s broader commitment to backing innovative technologies that improve health outcomes.
Ant Barker, Director of Venture Capital at Aviva Investors, commented: “As well as being an investor in Owlstone, Aviva is committed to supporting the wellbeing of our employees and we’re pleased to offer this unique opportunity for our colleagues to play a role in medical developments. Digestive health issues can be incredibly disruptive, impacting daily life and professional performance, and so are gaining increased attention as part of employee wellness efforts. Owlstone’s innovative approach has the potential to transform how these conditions are understood and managed, and we’re excited to support their journey through this pilot initiative.”
Billy Boyle, co-founder and CEO at Owlstone Medical, said: “OMED Health was founded to better the diagnosis and management of digestive health by providing patients and doctors with access to transformational breath-based solutions and clinical care, meaningfully improving patients’ quality of life, both at work and at home. We intend for the OMED solution to become part of the standard of care, either from ourselves or through license partners, and are grateful to Aviva for the support and funding provided for this study which will help us to advance towards this goal.”
- https://omedhealth.com/our-treatments-services/
- https://omedhealth.com/
- https://gutscharity.org.uk/advice-and-information/conditions/irritable-bowel-syndrome/
- https://www.bjmp.org/content/irritable-bowel-syndrome-primary-care-physicians
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6689327/
- Allergan IBS Global Impact Report
- https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/10-year-health-plan-for-england-fit-for-the-future
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
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OMED Health is the patient-facing brand of Owlstone Medical that offers patients and GI experts access to breath-based analysis, point-of-care devices, therapeutics and clinical support for digestive disease. The core of the offering is the proprietary OMED Health Breath Analyzer (listed with the FDA as a class 1 medical device), which measures gases derived from microbiome fermentation in exhaled breath. The multi-use handheld device allows routine monitoring anytime, anywhere, with no incremental cost per measurement, and the associated app allows for regular tracking of diet and lifestyle factors. The offering has now expanded in Great Britain to include Quality Care Commission certified OMED Health Plans. These include the diagnosis of Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) and Intestinal Methanogen Overgrowth (IMO) through at-home breath testing and substrate tests supporting the push to move care from hospitals to communities; clinician-led care pathways including nutritional protocols such as FODMAP and therapeutic interventions; and 1:1 clinical consultation with OMED’s in-house clinicians for ongoing expert support.
Owlstone Medical’s vision is to save 100,000 lives by realizing the enormous promise of breath-based diagnostics through the development and application of Breath Biopsy®, a unique platform capable of both biomarker discovery and use in routine clinical testing. The platform includes the Breath Biopsy VOC Atlas, the most extensive catalogue of identified volatile organic compounds (VOCs) commonly found on breath. The Company’s technology is protected by over 160 granted and pending patents and has been used in more 100 research papers.
Owlstone Medical’s Research Products and Services are being deployed at over 100 sites around the world with large pharmaceutical companies and leading academic institutions, and the company has partnered with the Gates Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and the FDA. Projects are supported by Breath Biopsy OMNI®, the most advanced solution for reliable end-to-end global breath VOC analysis, which is helping researchers advance biomarker discovery and disease research and maximizing the chances of finding clinically relevant breath biomarkers.
The Company has a portfolio of Breath Biopsy tests in development for the early detection of lung cancer and liver disease, both areas of high unmet clinical need that represent multi-billion dollar market opportunities. In digestive health, under the OMED Health brand, Owlstone has launched the OMED Health Breath Analyzer, and an associated app that allows for regular tracking of diet and lifestyle factors. In Great Britain, the OMED offer includes doctor-led OMED Health Plans, personalized treatments and services to help patients gain control of their functional gastrointestinal conditions.
Breath Biopsy represents an entirely new way to determine the chemical makeup of breath by measuring volatile organic compounds (VOCs), gaseous molecules that can be sampled quickly and non-invasively. VOCs originate from all parts of the body as the end product of metabolic processes, making Breath Biopsy applicable to a wide range of diseases including lung cancer, liver disease, and digestive disease. The nature of Breath Biopsy therefore makes it perfectly suited to addressing two of the major challenges of healthcare today: early detection of disease and precision medicine.