What we do
Medical and risk support for elite endurance projects.
Operational and clinical support for record attempts, high-profile challenges and expedition athletes.
A challenge built for a cause still has a human body at the centre of it. Fatigue, altitude, exposure and pressure all compound risk. The medical operation cannot become reactive.
The GEM answer
The athlete becomes the operating environment.
GEM builds the medical and risk system around the athlete, the route, and the objective. We assess physiological exposure, operational constraints, movement profile, recovery windows, and extraction feasibility before the challenge begins.
The service
Support built around the undertaking.
GEM works alongside athletes, production teams, sponsors and organisers, building medical systems proportionate to the challenge itself. The objective is stable operations under pressure.
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Before the attempt
Athlete, route and season assessed. Medical and performance risk screened. The plan written to hold up with insurer and broadcaster.
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During the attempt
A dedicated challenge medic stays with the athlete, around the clock. One medical lead with the clinical picture and the authority to call a stop.
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When it goes wrong
Evacuation and escalation set before the attempt starts. Local services briefed. The hard decision is made on clinical grounds, not on the schedule.
The attempt happens once. The preparation does not.
Proof
The highest-altitude marathon
On 16 September 2025, Joshua Patterson ran marathon distance on Uturuncu, a 6,008m stratovolcano in south-western Bolivia, at minus sixteen and roughly half the oxygen available at sea level. It took him over eleven hours. GEM built the medical plan around altitude as the primary risk: athlete screening, an eight-day acclimatisation profile, and a clinical team equipped for thin air and cold, with evacuation routes and escalation set before the attempt began.
In their words
Olivia Keating
I live with a chronic disease and have no choice but to control all the controllables. Knowing GEM are there makes entering events like this easy.
Ultrarunner
Governance
What the operation is built on.
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Clinical governance
GEM clinicians hold active professional registration with appropriate professional bodies including the GMC, RCN, and HCPC.
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Insurance and indemnity
GEM teams are fully insured and indemnified. Every medic holds personal medical indemnity specific to their role, profession and experience, reviewed to meet our standards of cover.
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Professional registration
Every GEM clinician holds active professional registration with their regulatory body and is in good standing. GMC, RCN, RCPara.
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Evidence-based practice
Medical plans follow current expedition and wilderness medicine guidance, written for the specific event, not adapted from a template.
Talk to us before the attempt is announced.
Tell us what the athlete is taking on, and where.
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