As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic the world has woken up to the potential of lateral flow testing.
Millions of these rapid tests have been distributed across the globe over the last 18 months as an affordable, easy-to-use alternative to laboratory testing. This has allowed asymptomatic people to test themselves for the virus and helped schools and workplaces to stay open.
Some companies are even producing antibody lateral flow tests to help people understand their immunity levels after infection or vaccination. Now the world knows about lateral flow testing, it’s time for test manufacturers and developers to seize the opportunity to innovate for the future. The next obvious evolution of lateral flow testing, to get the most out of the technology, is to go digital.
Adding digital connectivity to a test means you’ve straight away transformed a simple test into a powerful, real-time data sharing system. Lateral flow test results and other data can be recorded easily in real time without a reader. Using this system, end users get instant feedback and meaningful results through easy-to-use smartphone apps and desktop dashboards. This empowers them to make informed decisions about their health and lifestyle.
Here are three benefits of digitised lateral flow testing:
1. It can change our perceptions of patient generated health data (PGHD)
Patient generated health data (PGHD) is a hot topic in healthcare, with connected technology driving a shift towards patient-centric care. The amount of PGHD has increased exponentially in recent years and will continue to grow as patients and health professionals adopt new technology.
Much of the discussion around the future of PGHD has focused on new and emerging health technologies, including connected implants, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. But, post-pandemic, digitally connected lateral flow tests can become an integral part of the shift towards greater use of PGHD. From infectious diseases to lifestyle applications, lateral flow tests can capture valuable data and help put patients in charge of their own healthcare.
Test developers and manufacturers should stop thinking of and marketing their tests as a “throwaway” technology and instead realise their potential to become a powerful part of the data-driven healthcare technology revolution.
2. It can help plug data gaps and create greater equality in healthcare
In her book, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez argues that important ‘averages’, from car design to medical protocols, have been traditionally based on male data. This isn’t necessarily deliberate, it’s more that inventors, engineers, researchers, doctors and others routinely rely on data sets that don’t feature females. Criado Perez calls this absence a ‘data gap’.
It means data isn’t representative of the whole population – and this is where digitised lateral flow testing has an important role to play. The centralisation of data gathering in healthcare – in controlled environments like laboratories and hospitals – is one of the reasons gaps appear.
Lateral flow tests decentralise subject testing. They can be made available via the post, in workplaces, in schools and universities, via community hubs, pharmacies and over the counter, and can be carried out at home, at work, at school – in fact in hundreds of places that are not a lab. As well as providing a significantly cheaper way to test, they also provide a standardised way of assessing results that aren’t subject to reporting biases.
Digitised lateral flow testing allows data to be gathered reliably at a very large scale outside of traditional lab conditions. And this means that it can be sourced from more types of people. In future, regular digitised lateral flow testing could be used to increase our understanding of poorly understood conditions.
3. It will be a vital tool for future pandemics
Experts have warned that Covid-19 might not be the last viral pandemic we see in our lifetime. In a pandemic, it’s clear to see that the advantages of digitally connected rapid lateral flow diagnostic tests are numerous. You get:
- Instant results: Test results can be instantly uploaded to a secure cloud database, removing manual data entry errors.
- Enhanced data: Simultaneous capture of critical epidemiological data (such as age, gender, BMI, blood group and any underlying health conditions) and GPS location can help to better understand the nature of the virus.
- Shareable data: Live, geo-mapped results enable public health services globally to see the effects of the virus in real time and more efficiently target and deploy resources on the ground, such as healthcare staff, further diagnostic tests, medicines and vaccines.
- Traceability: Authorities can test and track the spread of the virus and alert users of possible infection risks. Patient contact details (such as mobile phone number and e-mail) can be simultaneously recorded in a data protection compliant way (e.g. Europe’s GDPR).
Chris Tossell is the Strategic Growth Director at Bond Digital Health, a global medtech company headquartered in the UK that provides data capture and management solutions for lateral flow diagnostics.