Today, Healthy.io, the global leader in turning the smartphone camera into a clinical grade medical device, announced an agreement with Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. placing Healthy.io’s Dip UTI test kits in hundreds of Boots pharmacies throughout the United Kingdom (U.K.).
| TEL AVIV, Israel, July 17, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Healthy.io, the global leader in turning the smartphone camera into a clinical grade medical device, announced an agreement with Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. placing Healthy.io’s Dip UTI test kits in hundreds of Boots pharmacies throughout the United Kingdom (U.K.). The national roll-out makes Healthy.io’s test kit available to the millions of women in the U.K. who suffer from urinary tract infections (UTIs) or cystitis. It is the only smartphone-based urinalysis cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European regulators as equivalent to lab-based testing.
Healthy.io also announced that it has partnered with The National Health Service (NHS) in England to conduct a pilot study across 38 pharmacies to explore how a home-based UTI testing kit can reduce the need for clinician visits, which account for over 10 million visits per year in the U.K. “By partnering with Boots pharmacies, we’re giving women across the U.K. a new option to quickly and easily test and receive treatment for UTIs, without the need to visit a clinic,” said Yonatan Adiri, founder and CEO of Healthy.io. “This partnership, and others like it in the future, will turn community pharmacies into a point of care and, by doing so, expand access to clinical-grade tests while improving health outcomes and lowering costs.” UTIs are the most common bacterial infections in humans; one in three women will have one by the time they are 24. It is estimated that there are 8 million physician visits and two million ER visits in the U.S. each year because of UTIs. A readily-available, at-home testing kit would significantly reduce these numbers. Starting today, women in the U.K. will be able to purchase Healthy.io’s Dip UTI test at a Boots pharmacy, do the test, and then return to a Boots pharmacy and have their results reviewed by a certified pharmacist. The pharmacist then can provide a course of antibiotics to treat their infection, if appropriate. This reduces the need to schedule, wait for, and visit a clinic, while also allowing women to complete the test on their own schedule and from their own home. Building on the work that Healthy.io has done with the NHS to explore how using the smartphone camera as a clinical-grade medical device can improve care and reduce cost, Healthy.io also is launching a pilot with the NHS England and East Midlands Academic Health Science Network (EMAHSN). The pilot will assess how the smartphone-based test can help provide women with quicker relief from symptoms, reduce complications due to delayed treatment, and prevent the overprescription of antibiotics. In addition, it will examine to what extent the Dip UTI test reduces the workload for local primary care practices. “Our aim as an organization is to identify, test, and spread innovations in health which improve outcomes and experiences for patients and save the NHS money,” said Tim Robinson, commercial director at EMAHSN. “By supporting this technology-enabled pathway, we hope to provide patients with quicker and easier access to UTI treatment and reduce general practitioner appointments.” Healthy.io has a deep commitment to establishing clinical evidence that its products work and expand access to health care. The nationwide Boots roll-out and the partnership with NHS England follow a successful pilot in pharmacies in London, Sheffield, and Cardiff. In addition, a study last week in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG) by researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that Healthy.io’s test was feasible, acceptable, and largely preferred by pregnant women receiving prenatal care. Results showed that 87 percent of participants attempted the test, with 96 percent of those women successfully completing the test. Two-thirds of the women said they preferred at-home self-testing as compared to just 10 percent who preferred conventional testing at a medical clinic. This echoes similar results from a study conducted with Geisinger Health and the National Kidney Foundation which found a 71 percent Dip.io test completion rate among a population of previously non-compliant patients with hypertension being tested for chronic kidney disease. With a convenient, at-home test and patient engagement, it is also possible to uncover previously undiagnosed conditions. In a recent rollout with Modality Partnership, a large primary care practice in York, England, patients with diabetes who had previously not completed a CKD screening, achieved a 72 percent compliance rate with previously untested patients and found that 10 percent of those patients had previously undiagnosed CKD. Using these results, it was estimated that if rolled out across the UK and offered to all non-compliant populations, Healthy.io’s CKD test would save the NHS £660 million over five years, while leading to earlier diagnosis; fewer deaths from CKD; and fewer people advancing to ESRD. “The results we have seen in the U.K. demonstrate the potential for Healthy.io’s urinalysis products to improve the quality of care, help patients, and reduce costs in the United States,” said Stephen Clark, formerly Senior Vice President at Optum Life Sciences and now U.S. Commercial Lead for Healthy.io. “We will continue to conduct these pilots across the U.S. as we enter the market here.” About Healthy.io
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