Six steps, start to finish.
1. Choose your test
Start with a profile or a panel.
There are 8 profiles, covering the systems most people want to look at: hormones, thyroid, liver, kidney, lipids, iron and the full blood count. Then 8 panels, which group them for a purpose: full body baseline, metabolic risk, cardiovascular risk, tiredness, kidney and liver, TRT monitoring, and the N=1 Panel, which is everything in one draw.
On top of that, 37 individual markers can be added, with more to come. Add-ons run on a venous sample only, and can only be bought alongside a profile or panel.
2. Choose how your sample is collected
Some of our tests can be collected by finger prick at home. Which ones is shown on each product page, and the full list is on our Capillary Testing page. Everything else needs a venous sample, usually because it needs a second tube or a volume a finger prick cannot reliably give.
Finger prick. You collect it yourself, at home, in about ten minutes. No appointment, no clinic, no travelling. Your kit contains everything you need. Finger-prick samples fail more often than venous ones, and one profile reports one fewer marker this way. We explain all of it here, before you buy.
Venous. Every venous order requires a blood draw option, chosen in the cart:
- Clinic appointment, £45. A nationwide network of clinics. We email you a booking link, you pick the clinic, the date and the time, and take your kit with you.
- London walk-in, £40. The lab’s own diagnostic centre on Wimpole Street, W1G. No appointment, any weekday between 07:00 and 19:00. No kit is posted to you and nothing to post afterwards. Take photographic identification. London only.
- Nurse home visit, £65. A nurse comes to you, brings the tubes, takes the sample and returns it to the lab. No kit is posted to you.
- Arrange your own draw, free. Any clinician who takes venous blood: a private GP, a travel clinic, a phlebotomy service, a colleague if you work in healthcare. You arrange it and pay whatever they charge.
A clinic appointment can be moved or cancelled free with at least 24 hours’ notice; a nurse home visit needs 72. The walk-in and your own draw have nothing to cancel. Full terms in our Refunds & Cancellations Policy.
The clinic network covers 275 locations nationwide, so there is usually one within a reasonable distance. If you are not sure there is one near you, email us before you order and we will check.
3. Your kit arrives
Usually dispatched within two working days, then usually two to three days in the post.
Inside: the tubes your test needs, labels, instructions and the lab request form.
Your order stays open for 120 days from the day you place it, whichever route you chose. Within that time you need to have used your kit, attended the walk-in, or had your nurse visit. After that we can reopen it for £20, with a fresh kit where one is involved.
If you booked a nurse home visit or the London walk-in, no kit is posted to you.
4. Collect Monday to Thursday, and post the same day
This is the single most important instruction on this page.
Blood starts to degrade the moment it leaves your arm, and some markers degrade fast. The full blood count in particular is only reliable for around 72 hours after the sample is taken. A sample posted on a Friday sits over the weekend, and by Monday the lab may have to reject it. That means starting again.
Collect on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, and post the same day, before the last collection. Almost every avoidable failure comes down to this one thing.
Preparation depends on what you ordered, and the requirements are set out on each product page and in Important Health Information.
5. The lab
Your sample goes to a UKAS-accredited medical laboratory, number 10641, accredited to ISO 15189:2022. The laboratory is registered with the Care Quality Commission, and takes part in the same external quality assessment schemes NHS labs use (NEQAS, WEQAS and DEQAS).
You can read the laboratory’s accreditation schedule yourself. It lists every method they are accredited for, and whether each one is accredited for venous blood, capillary blood, or both.
6. Your results
The laboratory reports every test we sell within 24 hours of receiving your sample, counted in working days. Around 98% of samples reach them within three days of posting, so most results land three to five working days after you post.
That 24 hours is the laboratory’s target rather than a guarantee, and the post is the part nobody controls. A sample posted late in the week can sit over a weekend.
The report is emailed to you as a password-protected PDF. Your report is released when every test on your order is finished, so a single order comes to you as one document.
If a result needs urgent attention, the lab tells us and we contact you as quickly as we can to say how quickly to seek help. We never tell you what the result means.
If something goes wrong with your sample
It happens, and rarely on a venous sample. What happens next depends on why.
If the fault is ours or the lab’s, you get a free replacement kit and a free retest, and we cover a further appointment if you had bought one. If your kit arrives damaged or goes missing in the post, you get a free replacement. For anything else you get one free replacement kit per order, and any further replacement on the same order costs £20.
Losing one or two individual markers out of a test is not a failed test. It happens occasionally even on a sound sample, we tell you plainly which markers are missing, and it does not trigger a replacement or a refund. Where a whole test on your order could not be run at all — a profile, a component of a panel, or an add-on you bought separately — you get a proportionate refund for that part.
Our Refunds & Cancellations Policy sets all of this out in full.
What we don’t do
N1 provides accredited laboratory testing and returns your full results to you. We do not currently provide clinical interpretation, and we add nothing to the report. If you want your results interpreted, take them to your GP or to a clinician who knows you.
We are not a healthcare provider and we are not registered with the Care Quality Commission, because we do not carry out any regulated activity. We do not test anyone under 18.
Here is why we built it that way.
Still deciding?
Choosing a test walks through what to look for before you buy. Full timings for every stage are on Turnaround Times.
If you want to know what an individual marker measures, every one we run is explained in the Biomarker Guide. If you want to know what the organ or system underneath it actually does, that is the Body Guide.
Anything else: contact@n1health.co.uk.