Cue Wellness (HLTH) produced a name for itself with a fast at-household COVID-19 test, a machine with a $200 price tag tag, and is out with 13 new tests this week, although none is compatible with the new machine. These at-household kits are processed at a lab, with outcomes speedily obtainable on the company’s app.
Cue Chief Health-related Officer, David Tsay, told Yahoo Finance that the corporation is operating on additional tests for its at-household machine, but that these new tests address market place demand.
“We’re expanding the item menu that functions with the Cue well being monitoring program,” Tsay stated.
That incorporates a flu test, combo flu/COVID test as nicely as an Mpox test. There are also clinical trials going on for RSV, chlamydia and gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), along with strep.
Tsay stated the new tests will assistance in expanding the item line all round. Quite a few of the tests selected currently have some competitors in the market place but had been locations the corporation deemed significant, such as heart well being, men’s and women’s well being, metabolic well being, and wellness.
Cue Wellness household test
The tests can be ordered on the app or site and involve almost everything for the lab to procedure.
But these are also out-of-pocket expenses, as conversations with well being insurers and government payers are nevertheless in the functions. The tests get started at about $69 for a colon cancer screening and go up to $224 for a women’s well being panel. There is also a Cue+ membership price tag that reduces the price tag by a couple of dollars, although the membership itself is $20 per month.
The turnaround instances for the tests outcomes are somewhat like the COVID-19 PCR tests that had been in higher demand throughout the peak of the pandemic. On a standard schedule, turnaround can be a single to two days, Tsay stated.
Lab collection kits are not new, but they saw heightened interest throughout the pandemic. Exactly where there was only a handful of players just before, there are now a lot of — like some of the greatest testing corporations in the nation.
“I feel what we saw in the pandemic was seriously an acceleration of all round societal trends currently that had been towards additional easy and accessible well being care,” Tsay stated.
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Labcorp (LH) CEO Adam Schechter told Yahoo Finance late final year that the lab testing giant noted the trend, and that at-household collection kits add to the comfort via the company’s network of physical areas.
“We are seeing additional and additional men and women opt to do at-household collections,” Schechter stated.
Labcorp launched its at-household kits final year, with a wider variety of tests that price anyplace from $29 to $219.
But Schechter added that the move does not disregard physicians as portion of the equation.
Tsay, a medically educated medical doctor himself, noted the similar.
“I feel it is great that customers now have an growing quantity of options to be in a position to assistance them access well being care from the comfort of their household,” Tsay stated.
He stated that physicians will in the end advantage from the lab outcomes as it can quicken diagnosis and therapy perform.
“I hear from my doctor colleagues that even now, considerably of their well being care provide is nevertheless completed remotely, regardless of the lifting of pandemic restrictions,” Tsay stated.
“Customers have seriously gotten applied to accessing well being care additional quickly, and are continuing to want the comfort of becoming in a position to access well being care,” he added.
The COVID-19 test remains the company’s most profitable item. Even as testing demand wanes, the corporation forged a partnership with the Minnesota Division of Wellness to deliver no cost Cue tests for the public.
And although the new tests do not capitalize on the test readers, which price additional than other fast, at-household COVID-19 tests on the market place, they give the brand possible as additional than just a a single-test corporation immediately after it went public mid-pandemic, Tsay stated.
Cue launched in 2021 at $16 per share, but it fell into and has been trading in the single digit variety given that May well of final year. It is faring improved than other testing corporations that rode the pandemic wave — some other startup test makers have given that declared bankruptcy.
In third quarter earnings, Cue reported income of $69.six million, a majority of which is coming from private sector consumers, for its COVID-19 test.
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