Once your own system's medical questions have determined that the prospective customer is eligible to pass through to medical screening, the customer is asked to declare those medical conditions that require risk assessment.

The customer volunteers the name of the condition(s) they have and may then (depending on what the condition is) be asked some simple questions about how the condition affects them. Our risk assessment system will recognise both medical terms ("myocardial infarction") and common lay expressions of the same thing ("heart attack"), and the question sets will not assume any medical knowledge on the part of the customer.

The completed process gives rise to a single value - a "Medical Risk Score" - for one person.

Medical risk score
The Medical Risk Score is determined by one or more declared conditions and the destination - there are no other factors that affect this score. Each condition results in a number of questions (which can be zero).  Each question has two or more possible responses.  Each response has a single score associated with it.  Once the questioning for a single condition for an individual has been completed, a "Toxic Combination" may or may not be applied (see below for explanation of toxic combination). The final result of all the medical conditions declared for an individual (with all the questions and answers completed) is the Medical Risk Score.

It is a useful point to remember that because the scores are multipliers, a score of 1 represents standard risk. 

Toxic combination
The Toxic Combination is an additional multiplier that is triggered when certain conditions are declared against certain countries. That is to say that some medical conditions, typically cancers and cardio-respiratory problems, present a much higher risk to the insurer when related claims occur in certain destinations. A toxic combination does not apply to all conditions and all regions but only to those that present this additional risk. The toxic combination weightings given to conditions vary. 

Overall score
An "Overall" risk score can be calculated in addition to the Medical Risk Score.  The Overall Score takes into consideration factors such as age, destination and advance booking period.  Since these factors are replicated within most travel insurance rates tables, in general it makes more sense to use the Medical Risk Score in conjunction with the insurer's rates tables in order to avoid double-counting the impact of certain risk factors.