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For years, testing companies have been lobbying for the ability to produce more at-home tests for things like flu and strep throat. Now that the world has gone through an at-home test crash course during COVID-19, they may get what they wanted. Austen Hufford reports for The Wall Street Journal:
The Covid-19 pandemic has hastened consumers’ willingness to test for more medical conditions at home, test makers said, expanding the market for self-diagnostic products.
Manufacturers are developing new types of at-home tests, including for flu and strep throat, aimed at consumers who are increasingly monitoring and managing their own health through fitness apps and smartwatches.
Boulder, Colo.-based fertility company MFB Fertility Inc. received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in February 2020 for its Proov test, designed to help women measure their hormone levels and to know when in a given month they are most likely to become pregnant. A typical kit includes 20 testing strips, allowing a woman to test daily, which the company said would be tough to achieve through visits to a doctor’s office.
Amy Beckley, the company’s chief executive, said the rise of at-home Covid-19 tests over the past year has made it much easier for people to understand her product.
“All of a sudden, home diagnostics and home testing became a thing,” she said.
Growth in rapid, at-home testing follows decades of development and lobbying from test makers and public-health and medical groups, said Nitika Pant Pai, a medical professor at McGill University who studies rapid tests.
Home tests can help more people know whether they are sick and can be faster, less costly and more convenient than laboratory-based tests, Dr. Pai said. Before Covid-19 began spreading world-wide, she said, some medical professionals and public-health officials had been reluctant to embrace at-home testing over concerns that the general public wouldn’t know how to perform a test, or overreact to results without doctors’ guidance.
Some home-based tests, including for pregnancy and blood-sugar monitoring, have been around for decades. In 2012 the FDA approved the first at-home test for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Manufacturers, testing experts and government regulators said there is enough interest in, and familiarity with, at-home testing that new tests are likely to reach consumers in the coming years.
“Covid has paved the way for home testing,” Dr. Pai said.
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