DIY Lab Tests Getting More Capable

the_newsbeagle writes "People who are into the quantified health trend can already measure and chart a wide variety of metrics — steps taken, calories burned, heart rate, blood pressure, sleep patterns, etc can all be tracked using new gadgets. Now a new device called Cue lets people track their biochemical stats, too. Cue offers five DIY lab tests, automates the testing procedure, and sends the results to the user's smartphone. It lets guys check their testosterone levels, ladies check their fertility status, and also offers tests for the flu virus, vitamin D levels, and an inflammation-marker protein. Apparently more tests are expected down the line."

Comments

who gets the data?

[alen]

except me

i can imagine the banner ads i'll start seeing once i take a few of these

Re:who gets the data?

[i kan reed]

Wait until your girlfriend starts getting crib advertisements.

Re:who gets the data?

[ShaunC]

Or crab advertisements!

Re: who gets the data?

[Adriax]

When your pregnant wife/girlfriend starts getting advertisements for odd foods before she starts craving them, then you should start to worry.

Cartridge Cost

[beojan]

The website states that the pre-order price ($149) includes five cartridges. Subsequent cartridges cost $4, or $10 for the flu test, so this is likely to be the main business model.

Re: Cartridge Cost

[Adriax]

I have two kids, my family tends to come down with crap starting friday nights, and only the emergency room is available over the weekend in our area. The ability to do simple tests like flu or strep at home would be a godsend.

FDA letter in 30 days and counting

[ColdWetDog]

No, it's 'not diagnostic' - it's 'only investigational' so they aren't trying to get FDA approval. Right. That ought to be amusing.

It's just the same solid phase chemistry that is used in our clinic analyzers. We have a bunch of little hand held units (which in the case of the Cue is replaced by the phone and app). The chemistry is well tested, if a bit spendy - we don't use these for most tests, usually as backup in case the big analyzer has a hissy fit or if we have to take it in the field or if you are doing really rapid testing.

So, it's really just a marketing campaign to see if they can get people to buy the cartridges and a legal campaign to see if they can outrun the FDA.

Re:FDA letter in 30 days and counting

[Kohath]

If 23andme can't sell a tiny vial for you to spit into, there's no way the FDA will allow this Cue device to be sold. Unless they spend the next 5 years and a couple hundred million dollars testing it.

That's the government protecting you from knowing your vitamin-D levels or whether you're at risk for hereditary diseases.

Re:FDA letter in 30 days and counting

[Anonymous Coward]

Sell it for "animal use only". :)

The internet will take care of educating everyone that humans are animals.

Re:FDA letter in 30 days and counting

[Anubis IV]

Well, 23andme was actually still allowed to do their analysis, so long as they limited themselves to non-medical factors. That is, they were still allowed to accept your spit in a vial and do a genetic analysis on it to determine your heritage, then share that information with you. The FDA took issue with them offering medical advice, such as advising customers that they were at risk for breast cancer or whatnot, since the tests hadn't been vetted and the FDA was apparently concerned at what customers might do in response to an unvetted test offering possible false positives.

Mind you, I'm explaining what happened, not defending it, and the reason I'm explaining it is to point out that it's entirely possible a vitamin-D test may be perfectly acceptable. Or it may not be. It could likely go either way.

Re:FDA letter in 30 days and counting

[mysidia]

Mind you, I'm explaining what happened, not defending it, and the reason I'm explaining it is to point out that it's entirely possible a vitamin-D test may be perfectly acceptable. Or it may not be. It could likely go either way.

If the test claims to be able to identify if you have a Vitamin-D deficiency problem, then the FDA will say that it is a diagnostic test requiring certification of the device and test methodology.

Re:FDA letter in 30 days and counting

[sjames]

I hope they win since even though the materials are 'spendy' compared to the big machine, the end user gets the results much cheaper and faster.

Re:And do what with the information?

[sandytaru]

I'd be curious to know if I got my vitamin D levels up. They were on the floor about a year and a half ago. For some reason that test costs an arm and a leg too, and I had to fight my insurance company to get them to cover it. (They should have been happy it was something that could be fixed with $5 worth of pills and sunshine.)

Early and Often

[oil]

So, for fertility they talk about being able to know when it's "time to try". What happened to the patented "early and often" method? This is not an improvement.

Cool

[koan]

What else does it test for?

Triglycerides

[Chemical Serenity]

A triglyceride test would go over big. A whole lipoprotein panel, in fact.

Hell, I'd use it myself.

Re:Triglycerides

[Eddy_D]

And second to that would be a blood sugar level test, that's becoming more important..

Re:Triglycerides

[Chemical Serenity]

You can already get glucose meters... or are you talking about something other?

Walmart already started

[Anonymous Coward]

This is old news to me as a type 1 diabetic who has chosen to divorce themselves from the ultra commercialized American medical system. I've been using Walmart's over-the-counter A1C test for several years. It was the only service of any value that my endocrinologist had provided in years. Before that, most of my quarterly checkups consisted entirely of him trying to come up with additional excuses to bill me and my insurance through ridiculous nutritional boot camps while threatening to not give me prescriptions for insulin pump supplies (a luxury rather than a necessity) if I didn't attend. His threats had no basis on the actual state of my health as I have always been highly in control of my diabetes. It was just about money. I finally got sick of being forced to beg for what amounts to a permission slip to continue living and was shocked by how many supplies and medications could be bought over-the-counter for less than what I'd been paying with insurance for prescriptions. My diabetes remains in control and I still get regular lab work. A year later after I left him, my doctor called and begged for me to come back (hopefully because too many of his patients were leaving him). I explained why I left and said to never call me again.

I'm thrilled to hear DIY medicine is continuing to expand in the hopes that someday no one will ever have to feel like their doctor's cash cow.

I'm curious

[justthinkit]

I'm curious. After you get your test results, what do you do next?

There is no "cure" for the flu. Antibiotics have major downsides.

Isn't this just a rest & fluids & patience situation? Does that really need tests?

Re: I'm curious

[Adriax]

If we know it's the flu we can care for her normally without the looming fear it's something worse. Gives you the chance to wait till the clinic is open instead of wasting a trip to an ER that has the motto "If it ain't broken bones, don't fix it."

That's half our doctors trips, finding out it's something we just have to let run its course. But we still need to get those tests done to know that.

Re: I'm curious

[sjames]

I thought the ER's motto was make 'em wait 8 hours, then do an MRI, CT, ultrasound, and complete blood workup, then tell 'em they just have to let it run it's course (and that'll be $5000 please).

Re: I'm curious

[Adriax]

If I thought it possible you might one day breed I would tell you to wait till you have a 3 year old with a fever of 104-105, 102 after both tylenol and ibuprophen, who sits quietly whimpering because everything hurts, and see if you feel comfortable waiting two days to see if it's serious.

But we both know that's never going to happen, so go ahead and fume over some mythical worldwide rate increase caused by my daughter's 4 ER visits over a 6 year period.

Re: I'm curious

[GTRacer]

To be fair, Adriax, the AC (somewhat rudely) did set a threshold for the fever. Yes, absolutely a fever that high and unresponsive means a doctor's visit. But having worked for three years with a healthcare group specifically established and funded by the city and the major area hospitals specifically to keep ER frequent fliers away, the AC has a valid point.

Our company took treatment data from the ERs and with our own nurse case managers and a multispecialty physician network rivaling paid insurance carriers, we worked to divert uninsured and underinsureds to PCP care for non-emergent issues. This was for far more than fevers - we did diabetes and hypertension management, obesity and smoking interventions, the works. The hospitals ponied up because they were sick (ha!) of eating the $6,500 average unpaid ER bill when people without insurance would skip out on paying. And because an ER is a /terrible/ place for routine health care. The people who complied with their care plans did better and had fewer ER visits and the hospitals and the city were happy,

Until budget cuts from the city and a lack of federal grant renewal put the kibosh on the whole thing. 1,400-odd covered folks went back to their old ways...

Re: I'm curious

[Adriax]

My problem is while we have very good insurance, we just don't have any other option. The only clinic here works 8-4 m-f and that's it, anything else has to go to the ER.

We had a small clinic open on the weekends for a short time, but the doctor running it was shunned by the other doctors in the area and died after 9 months of heart attack linked to work stress.
Guy had a full workload all weekend long so there is a need for weekend care, but the other doctors in the area apparently find it more profitable to force people into ER visits.

This is one way to reduce medical costs

[Karmashock]

Most medical tests can be boiled down to something simple enough for the patient to self diagnose with proper equipment.

If the US Navy can get 18 year old high school students to manage nuclear reactors aboard submarines then I think we can get the average American able to self diagnose most tests.

Cut that out of the hospital bill and you've already gone a long way to make healthcare more affordable.

This was the mistake with the healthcare reform push. They keep doing this... they just throw money at problems and expect the problem to go away. They did the same thing with housing and education. Rather then get poor people homes by giving them cheap home loans, they instead inflated home prices and made homes less affordable for people that would otherwise have had no trouble buying homes. They increased debt and created a bad house flipping culture that simply accelerated the coming crash. The same thing has happened in education. They just throw money at the students which inflates university prices well beyond the inflation rate and then IF they actually graduate they are in so much debt that they're not able to do anything in their lives but service that debt for years.

The solution is and has always been supply side rather then demand side. Demand side is just give people money and expect everything to work out properly. The problem is that it doesn't actually fix anything and tends to just inflate prices. Prices for healthcare. Prices for housing. Prices for education... it doesn't matter. Demand side stimulus just inflates prices.

The alternative is supply side. You increase the supply without giving anyone any additional money to actually buy the service. The idea is that by increasing the supply the cost of the good or service will naturally fall.

In this case, medical tests. You make it so that more people can perform the tests and that the ACTUAL per test cost is much lower. Thus the cost to the patients and what patients spend on healthcare should go down.

Supply side. Its the less moronic way to deal with controlling costs.

Re:This is one way to reduce medical costs

[Karmashock]

1. As to submariners, the point is that they're hardly nuclear engineers or physicists. Their instructions are literally picture diagrams. Little cartoons that tell them what to do in situation A1-F, etc.

2. As to education required to read a test, I am not taking away the doctor. By all means go to the hospital every single time if that's what floats your boat. However, some of us would prefer to have direct control over our healthcare and this would give us that.

You think that's unwise? Fine. I would never force you to use it. However, do not have the arrogance to suggest you have a right to force me.

If the public in general has the option to buy a kit and self diagnose, a significant portion of the population will buy the kits and use them. Will some of them kill themselves with a false positive or false negative? Yes. But then that also happens in hospitals and I personally feel as if I'm clever enough to figure it out if given reasonable instructions. You disagree? Its my body. My choice.

Hospitals are already outright abusive with their cost structure. People are already compromising their health simply because they're afraid of these medical costs. We are a first world country.... that is bullshit. Now obviously here is where the state healthcare lobby chimes in to tell us how we wouldn't have this problem if we just opted for state healthcare. Well, maybe and maybe not. Under that idea we all pay higher taxes and then are at the mercy of whatever monstrosity the government concocts. Given how they've run public education and a dozen other half assed institutions you'll forgive me if I'm not terribly confident in their competence.

I am an American... I want to be free. I want to go off do my own thing and be left the fuck alone. And I'd rather not die of some terrible disease or otherwise suffer in any way what so ever simply for wanting to be left alone. And for that to have a chance in hell, I need these kits or I am going to be sitting in some hospital paying through the nose for tests that I probably could have done myself given half a chance.

3. As to supply side devaluing the quality of a good or service, this is of course true. However, the quality of the good or service is ultimately what people feel is reasonable. A good example of this is food. Many people eat low quality food despite food being very abundant in the US. However, the low quality food is very cheap and so people will often buy it because they don't really care about the difference in quality.

Even so, food is so abundant in the US that the quality of our food is going up even though people don't like paying much for it. Fresh fruit and vegetables are more common and the quality of those goes up all the time without an increase in cost.

Supply side lowers costs, increases quality, and is generally good for everyone except for those that thrive on scarcity.

4. Your shelter example was actually a demand side comparison which I pointed out actually was counter productive. It gave poor people homes but also inflated the value of homes by pumping more money into the home BUYING market. That caused many people that otherwise would have had no trouble buying homes to need more extensive loans. This created a feed back loop as the government and the banks kept offering bigger loans with looser requirements to try and increase home ownership. The end result was the mortgage collapse.

Now, consider the alternative... Build homes. Don't buy homes for people. Don't give them money. Build homes. Build millions of them. That will LOWER home prices. That causes problems IF you do it all at once but if you do it a consistent and predictable basis and do only so much to keep home prices affordable... then you won't annoy home owners. And while the very poor will still not be able to buy homes, everyone else in society will have an easier time owning them. As to the very poor, expecting them to own homes is itself an unreasonable goal unless you set them up in a wilderness/nomansland. Short of

Re:And do what with the information?

[sjames]

Figure out that 'low T' and pretty much all of the other branded 'conditions' are a load of crap?

Wrong tense

[petes_PoV]

Now a new device called Cue

According to the device's website: shipping expected in spring 2015

So, essentially, right now, they have nothing except a website and some 3D graphics. Please re-run the story in a year or so if/when this thing gets off the ground and there is some actionable information to back it up.

Re:gmhowell, what has APK done to you?

[gmhowell]

You wouldn't stick your dick in a garbage disposal, so why would you use apk's malware?

All the cool kids were doing it.

Re:And do what with the information?

[sandytaru]

Because if it had been thyroid cancer and not a low vitamin D level, the cost could have been $30,000 for treatment. I don't have 30K lying around, do you?

ER visits can spread disease & get disease

[Paul Fernhout]

See for alternatives,with a section on fever: http://www.amazon.com/Raise-He...
"Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, renowned pediatrician and author advises parents on home treatment and diagnosis of colds and flus, childhood illnesses, vision and hearing problems, allergies, and more. PLUS, a complete section on picking the right doctor for your child, step-by-step instructions for knowing when to call a doctor, and much more."

Dr. Sears on fevers:
http://www.askdrsears.com/topi...
"If your child of any age has one or more of the following symptoms, you should probably call your doctor right away: High fevers of 104 (40 Celcius) or higher that don't come down to 101 or 102 (38.3 to 38.9 Celcius) with the treatment measures below. ...."

Fevers are part of how the body activates parts of the immune response and also makes an environment less hospitable for disease.

I've also found this advice helpful:
https://www.drfuhrman.com/chil...
"Scientific research has demonstrated that humans have a powerful immune system, even stronger than other animals. Our bodies are self-repairing, self-defending organisms, which have the innate ability to defend themselves against microbes and prevent chronic illnesses. This can only happen if we give our bodies the correct raw materials."

Vitamin D deficiency and iodine deficiency are things to look into too. We take that regularly as pills and also dulse seaweed on popcorn -- I've read that iodine forms a protective layer at the edge of cells against some viruses. Elderberry and zinc may also help with a cold or flu; I just stocked upon some of those two as lozenges and other forms for the next time someone in my family gets a cold. See also:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...
"Don't be alarmed if your cold symptoms last longer than you expect. On average, patients report that their common cold symptoms last one and a half to two weeks. In children, earaches tend to last anywhere from less than one day to 9 days, sore throat 2 to 7 days, cough up to 25 days, and the common cold 7 to 15 days.32 In time, the body will clear the virus on its own. Remember, over-the-counter medications merely mask symptoms, and may even impair healing. However, if you experience a sudden worsening of symptoms, especially including labored breathing, or a fever above 103 degrees for three days, then it is time to call the doctor."

Extended breastfeeding also helps reduce illness in young children if the mother is getting adequate nutrition and is in the same environment with the kid, since her immune system will scan the environment for threats and produce antibodies for the nursing child. WHO recommend nursing for up to two years or beyond, even if that is not the norm in the USA:
http://www.who.int/topics/brea...
"Exclusive breastfeeding is recommended up to 6 months of age, with continued breastfeeding along with appropriate complementary foods up to two years of age or beyond."

When I was last in an urgent care facility for a physical injury, the guy ahead of me was there for the flu (he had diabetes and was worried about complications). I remember thinking of that when being asked to sit in the same chair he had sat in for paperwork, and probably handed the same pen he used, and of course breathing the same air in a confined space, etc.. I ended up with the flu, which made the recovery process longer and harder (although I might have gotten the flu elsewhere too, perhaps from my own family). Hospitals are full of a lot of worse stuff than the flu, too, so I guess I got lucky in that sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.

Re:George M. Howell

[gmhowell]

One of those is correct. And trivial to discover.

Re:gmhowell, what has APK done to you?

[gmhowell]

So you spent four days thinking about me and faildoxing me, and I haven't given your pathetic existence any consideration since trolling you Tuesday night. Pathetic, APK, pathetic...

Re:And do what with the information?

[sandytaru]

I think my parents paid very little when I was a kid. I was born in an Army hospital - the fee for my birth was $13 for a notarized birth certificate, according to my mother. We had Champus and later on Tricare. I have no idea what the monthly fees were for them.

Re:gmhowell, what has APK done to you?

[gmhowell]

Don't fool yourself. You don't possess the capacity to think. Look at your 1 line fart posts as proof.

And you continue to fixate on me. I'd be flattered if you weren't a basement dwelling turd.