At-home testing is not a new concept, but it is evolving. Recently, populations have been getting accustomed to using COVID-19 tests at home, while tech companies have even been offering DNA testing by post. But what will at-home testing look like in 2030?
In this illuminating webinar, Medical Lab Director Dr. Elsie Yu shares the initiatives her organization has implemented and explores what might shape the future of at-home testing.
Geisinger is a health and wellness organization in Pennsylvania, USA, with 10 hospitals and around 80 clinics in its service area. It provides care to more than 4 million people in over 47 counties, serving an area approximately the same size as Austria. Some patients live far from the hospitals or clinics, meaning at-home care is of importance to the service.
In this webinar for the Roche Point of Care Academy, Dr. Yu shares details of Geisinger’s existing at-home testing programs and looks ahead to what might be possible by 2030. The views shared in the webinar have been summarized below.
Well-known at-home tests include pregnancy tests, glucose meters, fecal occult blood testing (FOBT), HIV/STI tests, ovulation tests and drug-abuse cups. Dr. Yu explores some of the devices used by the Geisinger in more depth:
Diabetes patients routinely use these meters to manage their glucose level. What’s more, the monitor can be paired with an insulin pump, which makes it possible to reduce finger sticks (important for type 1 diabetes), while simplifying the management of type 1 diabetes.
In 2005, Geisinger started remote telemonitoring to track patients’ weight, shortness of breath and ankle edema. This was then reviewed by clerical staff and escalated to a nurse case manager if required.
The health bus is a hybrid between home health and a traditional clinic/hospital care, which was initially focused on closing the care gap for HbA1c testing during the pandemic. By scheduling a phlebotomist, the bus will now be able to complete overdue lab tests. Services include:
There are challenges to using at-home testing, such as who pays for the device, whether a healthcare provider can trust the at-home test result and whether the result can be documented officially.
However, the pandemic has accelerated innovation on this front, for example there are COVID-19 tests for travel purposes that include telehealth video monitoring and provide an official health report.
If our goal is to help consumers use at-home tests to improve their overall health, we need to ask the following questions:
According to WHO, health literacy empowers people to make positive choices.
Dr. Yu suggests that mobile and telemedicine will become more widely available, and that at-home sample collection will undoubtedly be useful. However, most chemistry tests will still require around 1mL of blood (more than current at-home tests). We will also need to consider sample storage and stability, as well as the biohazard risk of sending samples by mail.
Wearable health devices attract a lot of discussion. Step tracking is currently popular, but we may be able to use smart watch data to predict hydration status or anemia—further studies are needed in this area. In Singapore, they are using an app combined with a smartwatch to track healthy activity and remind participants to stretch or move. It will be interesting to see if this improves the participants’ health in the long term.
The views and opinions expressed in this webinar are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Roche or any other sponsors.
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