Forget Theranos. There’s now a BetterWay to do
diagnostic tests via small blood samples.
While Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes serves an 11-year prison sentence for fraud in Bryan, Texas, BetterWay has spent the past 10 months pricking
consumer fingertips in Austin retail locations 100 miles to the west.
The brand, from Austin-based Babson Diagnostics, can now be found in over a dozen H-E-B grocery stores, independent
pharmacies and health clinics, offering “tests needed for annual physical exams, screenings, and more.”
Through an ongoing partnership with medtech blood collection
leader and company investor Becton, Dickinson (BD), Babson has also begun marketing BetterWay to leading health systems nationwide while talking with grocery and pharmacy chains about retail
expansion.
Unlike the ill-fated Theranos system, which was already defunct when Babson spun off from Siemens Healthineers (another investor) in 2017, BetterWay doesn’t depend on mini
in-store laboratories, Founder/COO Eric Olson tells Pharma & Health Insider.
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Rather, the pea-sized blood samples (as little as six drops) collected by BetterWay are sent to a
central lab in Austin, with results returned in a day or two. Around the country, local participants will be enabled with the lab technology, Olson says.
“We followed a completely
different playbook” than Theranos, he relates.
“Theranos’ strategy was to take a high-complexity laboratory, shrink it down into a box, and put that box out at a
pharmacy.,” he explains. “Our strategy is to take a small capillary sample from the fingertip, but prepare and stabilize it in a way that it can go to a proper laboratory for high-quality
testing.”
Olson acknowledges that selling into pharmacies and groceries has hardly been a cakewalk in the wake of the Theranos scandal and its resulting documentaries and
dramatizations.
“There’s a healthy amount of skepticism and there should be a healthy amount of skepticism because there was a lot that was done wrong before,” he
says. “So we built a company from the ground up to be able to lead with our science, and that’s why we did all the validation first before commercializing.
“With all our
partners, we share all our data and we’re fully transparent. We actually prefer partners skeptical enough to ask the right questions about the accuracy of our testing.”
BetterWay
has also been gaining traction in the face of equal skepticism from the media and tech communities.
After being named medtech company of the year for 2024 by Medical Device and Diagnostic
industry, the brand a couple of weeks ago won SXSW’s Innovation Award in the Health & Biotech category.
Taking advantage of its hometown status, BetterWay also provided blood
tests to several hundred SXSW attendees -- both as part of its required product demonstration in front of the competition judges and at the brand’s expo hall booth.
Austin consumers have
also been learning about Better Way through radio, print and digital ads, Olson says. Outreach is done with retailer, insurance companies, health systems and “individual docs that prescribe our
tests.”
The BetterWay website even includes a downloadable test requisition form. “Take it to your next appointment and ask your doctor to order your blood work with
BetterWay,” suggests the site, which includes :30, :60 and :90 videos explaining how “blood testing reimagined” works.
“There are different value propositions for
different stakeholders,” Olson adds. “For example, health systems want to be more competitive by offering a better way to get blood work. And they want to make it easy. The blood testing
experience is a reflection on the doctor that prescribes it, it’s a reflection on the insurance company that reimburses it, and all those stakeholders are aware that the current way we do blood
testing is not meeting the consumer’s need for it being easy and pleasant.”
As one whose veins sometimes prove elusive to attending phlebotomists, I can personally attest to the
unease and stress related to large needles being inserted into my inner elbows as the phlebotomist attempts to draw enough blood to fill multiple test tube vials.
BetterWay doesn’t need
phlebotomists. Olson says the company has already trained more than 100 people to collect blood using its system.