Imagine being able to access a wealth of data about your health by simply visiting your local pharmacy.
If you think this concept sounds familiar, you’re right. Theranos was a media and business world darling, at one point boasting a $9 billion valuation at its peak.
But while consumers and the pharmacy sector in the US were eager to bring such testing services to the community pharmacy, the now-defunct healthcare technology company (and its convicted fraudster founder Elizabeth Holmes) proved only they could not deliver.
Despite this setback, the biggest players in the global pharmacy industry and healthcare consumers are proving that high-quality point-of-care diagnostics and services are not just a fantasy, but now a reality in pharmacies across Canada thanks to pharmacy services innovator Avricore Health (TSX-V:AVCR, OTC:AVCRF).
The Vancouver, British Columbia-based company is focused on delivering point-of-care testing and data solutions for pharmacies through its turnkey solution HealthTab.
“We don’t shy away from the fact that others weren’t able to deliver on their promises,” Avricore's CEO Hector Bremner told Proactive.
As he explains, Avricore has found substantial success in the point-of-care testing market by not trying to be everything to everybody.
“Other companies in the space have tried to re-invent the wheel and got themselves in trouble,” Bremner said.
“We don’t claim to be replacing laboratories by any means, but we want to support an expanded scope to community pharmacists so they help ease pressure on healthcare systems and better health outcomes.”
Screening for diabetes and cardiovascular disease risk
Avricore’s HealthTab platform allows pharmacists to screen patients for up to 27 biomarkers of chronic health conditions in addition to being able to test for common viral and bacterial infections such as strep and COVID-19.
The company is currently focused on screening for diabetes and heart disease risk. Through its partnership with Abbott Rapid Diagnostics, three devices usually found in acute care settings or laboratories are used to test patients for A1C, lipid profile, C-reactive protein, kidney function, electrolytes, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), strep, and influenza A and B.
The HealthTab platform encompasses these instruments and tests, in addition to Avricore’s cloud-based system, which are packaged together and deployed to pharmacies to ensure ease of use.
“It is very easy to deploy as we’re using a lot of off-the-shelf, proven technology,” Bremner said.
“Working with some of the largest players like Abbott, who can meet supply chain demands and have a great track record meaning these devices are approved and respected, allows us to move into markets without having onerous regulatory changes.”
READ: Avricore Health sees 3Q revenue soar by 662% as it successfully scales its HealthTab network
Bremner noted that while other companies had not seen sustained success in deploying similar platforms, Avricore’s approach had been “wildly successful.”
“We’ve been able to make it affordable for the pharmacy by consolidating all of these items and bringing it together for them,” he said. “Then for the patients, the testing is generally at no cost to them.”
Patients who use HealthTab can access and track their test results through the platform’s online portal.
“The data coming out of the instruments and other inputs from the patient are amalgamated in real-time without any sort of human intervention in terms of administration and it produces actionable information where the healthcare provider, in this case, the pharmacist, and patient can make evidence-based choices around their healthcare plan,” Bremner said.
Avricore prides itself on embodying the true spirit of health data legislation in that patients own their data.
“We aren’t focused on building fences around that information,” Bremner explained. “We can connect and collaborate with just about anyone to get that information where it needs to be for the patient.”
“It’s really part of our mandate that we don’t view anyone as competition: we want to collaborate.”
Information collected by Avricore’s network of pharmacy providers can also be used as real-world data to support clinical trial groups and inform the work of health organizations.
With Health Canada and the United States Food and Drug Administration mandating the use of real-world evidence in both drug approval and monitoring, testing in pharmacies is set to play an important role going forward, Bremner noted.
The critical role of point-of-care testing
As Bremner told Proactive, the role of pharmacists is evolving. “Pharmacy, which is a US$1.6 trillion business globally, is transitioning away from simply prescribing and dispensing pills into services,” he said.
In fact, as of January 1, 2023, pharmacists in the province of Ontario, Canada, have been given the power to prescribe treatments for 13 common ailments, including pink eye, hemorrhoids, and urinary tract infections to help reduce the burden on primary care physicians.
Bremner noted that pharmacists are highly trained medical professionals who are overtrained and underutilized in their current roles.
“Even in Canada where we have a universal health care system it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s universally accessible, so the pharmacy is a great place to offer more services to those not being served well in the current approach, but pharmacies need new technologies in order to facilitate that,” he said.
“You could go ask your doctor for some of this blood work but either people don’t have access to a physician or when they request this type of information, there’s sometimes pushback because unless there’s something broken or it’s at a crisis level the healthcare system doesn’t really react.”
And there is a growing desire by patients to have a greater understanding of their health in order to make evidence-based medical decisions.
“Many people turn to Dr Google or internet genomics like 23andMe and other testing platforms to get a better understanding of their health and make evidence-based decisions,” Bremner said.
Multi-billion-dollar market
The point-of-care testing market is growing exponentially and is expected to reach over US$72 billion by the end of the decade, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 8.8% from 2022 to 2030, according to a report by Acumen Research and Consulting.
Bremner noted that, as pharmacy transforms, pharmacists are especially well-positioned to deal with chronic diseases prevalent in Canada, with almost half of Canadians over the age of 20 having one or more chronic diseases and about one-third having diabetes or pre-diabetes.
“There are numerous studies that have shown that when an individual has intervention from a community pharmacist that their chronic disease outcomes dramatically improve, and that’s even without technologies like what we’re offering,” he said.
“But more people now are recognizing that these are avoidable outcomes that can be managed by changing their lifestyle or diet, and our solution is something that’s going to have a profound impact on long-term healthcare costs and outcomes for patients.”
Global expansion opportunities
Bremner said the most significant opportunities in front of Avricore included the expansion of its offering within Canada and internationally.
The company is very bullish on the United Kingdom and the European Union, both of which have public healthcare systems.
“Preventative health is certainly something these governments are going to be investing in as they look to stave off future costs, then companies like ours will be even more necessary to ensure that the right information gets to where it needs to be in a timely fashion,” he said.
In 2023 and beyond, Avricore is focused on rolling out the HealthTab to pharmacy locations and developing additional tests that could be added to the platform, with Bremner citing blood glucose meters as a possible future addition.
Last year, the company successfully scaled up the deployment of its HealthTab to more than 420 locations across Canada through its partnership with Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart.
“We have proven we can scale successfully in 2022 and have created the world’s largest cloud-connected harmonized network of analyzers and community pharmacists,” Bremner said. “And we’ve only just scratched the surface of what we can do.”
Contact the author at emily.jarvie@proactiveinvestors.com
Follow her on Twitter @emilyjjarvie