The article from The Ken discusses the growing trend of at-home blood testing and highlights several issues, including inaccuracies in results due to improper sample collection, transportation delays, and user errors. These challenges often lead to incorrect or unreliable data, which can undermine the trust and effectiveness of at-home diagnostic tests.
Some excerpts from the article that show the current state of affairs:
"“PharmEasy gave a fake HbA1c report,” Anuj told The Ken. The HbA1c test, crucial for diagnosing and monitoring diabetes, indicated his parents were pre-diabetic.""
"“The whole [diagnostics] industry is a mess. They’re treating home collection like a food-delivery service” "
I have also been at the receiving end of this - In one instance this year, I visited a clinic in Gurgaon that promised CBC results in under 3 hours, and were supposedly working with Healthians. When contacted, Healthians denied being associated with them, and instead proceeded to call me multiple times the same day to see if I wanted to book a lab test with them - I have had less spam calls from people selling credit cards! And in another case, a lab gave results from a device that did not have a sample put in in the first place; and these are labs that I have personally seen, and visited. Rest can be seen in the article linked here.
The vast majority of Indian path labs are non-accredited, and do not run frequent calibration and control samples - often giving erroneous reports with zero accountability. In our dealings with a lot of labs, and lab technicians , we have found that there is minimal to no incentive for the labs to have a standardised ops procedure, simply because the running costs for majority of them will increase significantly if they were to do so.
At Adsys we are working to solve the issue that The Ken highlighted, starting with CBC - point of care tests have no interference with sample transportation and storage. By putting the tests in from of the patients themselves, and bringing decentralisation to the lab infrastructure from the ground up, we are addressing the critical issues of accuracy, reliability, and standardisation that have plagued the sector. We are committed to bringing transparency and trust back into medical diagnostics, ensuring patients receive the care and information they need for better health outcomes.
Apoorv Agarwal
