Home blood test kits- the verdict
As an ex-Biomedical Scientist, I have always been excited by the prospect of future medical technologies that enable personal autonomy in health as I believe everyone deserves access to proper healthcare and nutrition. In Covid, the average Joe was unable to visit his GP and get the healthcare services necessary for prevention and alimentation of non-covid related disease and illness. Therefore illness either went untreated or average Joe had to take their health “into their own hands” (as the Thriva slogan goes) and seek methods to sort out their own health themselves, autonomously. Home blood test kits have been a baby of such decisions, and as a curious spectator of biomedical advances who has worked with many science startups, I decided to check them out.
I am in my late twenties, and in my life so far, I have watched the emergence of the Human Genome Project and advanced genetic sampling techniques and AI. I have seen new robotic surgeries, health wearables, precision diagnostics, advanced research techniques thanks to improved technology and most recently gut microbiota testing services and the advancement of new quick home postal biomedical blood testing. Covid has highlighted the need for health research and funding and exacerbating the research progression and so more and more biomedical tools are entering the market. I decided to check out some such services and try a home postal blood testing service.
WHAT DID I THINK?
Thriva blood test kit: I used the money I had been saving for a holiday (thanks Covid for cancelling this again) to pay for a Thriva home kit. I wanted to test my blood Cholesterol levels as I suspected these were too low and also to test my blood Omega3 and Omega6 levels to ensure I was not enhancing my dietary Omega3 levels to a point where I was reducing my Cholesterol too much. I “Googled” such services and Thriva came up. I personally know the founders, Elliot and Hamish, as I used to work with the entrepreneur learning programme they worked with and so it seemed like a good opportunity to test what they had been promoting.
The kit: the kit is a home-based blood testing kit that gives you test tubes and instructions on how to draw blood.
What did I think?
Well, once ordering the kit arrived relatively fast, the packaging is well labelled and it comes with straightforward instructions. The kit suggests leaving 30 minutes to do draw blood, which was accurate, but you had to fast for 8 hours before and this meant doing it before breakfast. Trying to draw blood with low blood sugar pre-breakfast with aching tiredness in the 30 minutes before work made things harder, and is not something my phlebotomist amateur self found easy. It left me with profound sympathy for diabetics who have to take their blood regularly to test their blood sugar. I had to do three prick finger attempts, which left me with a very sore finger, hard when you type for a living.
Eventually, I successfully withdrew a blood sample, and labelled it and posted it for testing. The labels and packaging were fun and I loved the sanitary measures and cute touches like smiley faces on the plasters. The results were relatively quick to come to me, and it was interesting and fun to try, but in the future, I think I would rather visit a professional who knows what they are doing when drawing blood than do it myself at my breakfast table before work. Also, it was not linked to my GP, and no conclusions drawn together, and so overall, I had to diagnose myself, which as I have the knowledge, was fine, but would make it harder for average Joe to get the care they sought for improving their health. I think this service is still very much in its infancy. Things are not tied up enough yet between these private services and proper diagnostic analysis.
However, saying that I think Thriva is amazing. They are one of the future-focused services revolutionising the way we see and do medicine. Thriva is in its infancy, but I see huge potential. Every year, more and more services are added to its health testing abilities (most recently fertility treatment tests), and I have seen similar startups hit the market. I have worked with medical startups my whole career and have been impressed recently by the growth of new (I cannot vouch for their services but they look promising) ventures from Baze, Stix, Vitl, Zoe (personalised nutrition- food is medicine), Ovivia, Medichecks, Thryve and Atlas Biomed (for testing gut microbiota) and many more, all of which are revolutionising the way we access and do personal health. The startup world is leading the wave of scientific advancement in both public and private medicine and enabling more and more people to get access to the healthspan and lifespan enhancing technology which enables them to take necessary steps towards autonomously improving their health. This is the future, it is personalised medicine based upon evaluated evidence, that aims to help prevent rather than just treat disease, and the future looks bright.
