Integrating at-home diagnostic testing into the home healthcare revolution

Home-based care is one of the hottest trends in the healthcare industry as consumers seek affordable, accessible, and convenient ways to get the services they need without the disruption of clinic and hospital visits.

A recent report by consulting firm, MarketsandMarkets, predicts the home healthcare market will be worth $383 billion by 2028, which includes at-home diagnostic testing, screening and monitoring. 

Excitement over the possibilities of this massive shift was on full display at ViVE 2024, held in Los Angeles in February, with multiple panels dedicated to best practices for putting home health into action for eager consumers.

In a session called “DIY Preventive Diagnostics,” ixlayer’s Chief Medical Officer, Bernard Esquivel, MD, PhD, was joined by representatives from other leading health tech companies to explore new methods for bringing at-home diagnostic testing to more patients.

“At-home testing is changing how care is being delivered,” said Esquivel. “It’s moving it from reactive to proactive, and it’s helping to empower patients to take more accountability and ownership over their health.  There is so much innovation in this space, and we’re proud to be a part of it.”

Finding the value in bringing services into the home

“At-home testing goes hand-in-hand with the principles of value-based care, where money follows outcomes,” explained Esquivel. “But just like value-based care in the broader ecosystem, there are challenges around building trust, developing the financial frameworks for reimbursement, and ensuring that quality is always top of mind.”  

“These are complex pain points that need to be solved collaboratively across different stakeholders so we can realize true benefits for all consumers, whatever their barriers or opportunities around engaging with care.”

Bringing meaningful value to the market starts with trust, quality, and personalizing the experience using a variety of targeted methods, agreed panelist Max Cohen, CEO and Co-founder of Sprinter Health, which provides hands-on, in-home preventive care services in California.

“Products don’t win in healthcare,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you have the best product. It matters if you have the best relationships. When we’re thinking about Medicaid populations who don’t have access, don’t have paid time off to go to the doctor, and don’t have that trust in the healthcare system, you have to start by building relationships that use a combination of strategies.”

“You have to have kits sent to the home; you have to have in-person care; and you have to have people going into the doctor if you want to try to hit 100% of the population, which is really the moral imperative we all share.”

Integrating at-home testing into the care continuum

To form strong relationships with consumers – and maintain those relationships throughout their individualized healthcare journey – at-home diagnostic testing must be fully integrated into the broader care continuum, the panelists noted.

“Information is flowing in from all different directions,” said Esquivel. “It’s coming from labs, going to the medical entity for review, going to the patient – and hopefully, being used by those providers and patients to make appropriate decisions about their next steps. We need solutions that facilitate this data flow in a secure and seamless fashion so we can act on the insights in a timely way.”

The key is to foster seamless interactions in both the backend processes and the patient-facing experience, added Beth Andrews, Chief Digital Health Officer & Business Development Lead for Life Sciences & Healthcare at Dell Technologies.

“So much of what we call ‘innovation’ is about offering more choices and taking out the frictions in existing processes,” she said. “Virtual programs and in-home programs are almost a no-brainer for making that happen. We just need to make sure that we have the data and technology behind it to support adoption in a scalable and accessible way.”

Looking ahead to the future of at-home diagnostic testing

While there are still some challenges to overcome before at-home diagnostic testing becomes mainstream and is fully integrated into the healthcare experience, experts on the panel were optimistic that at-home testing will soon become a routine occurrence.

The rise of artificial intelligence will bring many benefits to the industry. For example, data from the increasing range of tests being taken at home can be used to deliver new insights that enable a greater understanding of patterns in population health, and support the delivery of more personalized care.  

The industry will begin to see significant movement toward in-home diagnostics over the next three to five years, the experts predicted, as financial models continue to evolve in support of these value-driven services.

“Healthcare is ready to change dramatically, and at-home diagnostic testing is going to be a big part of that,” Esquivel concluded. “It’s going to be a game changer, so now is the time to get prepared to bring at-home testing into the care process and start seeing the promising results it has to offer.”