The overview
Traditional blood testing typically involves drawing a test tube’s worth of blood from veins in a patient’s arm. The process can be a barrier, as BetterWay reported 40% of patients avoid testing for reasons like affordability or discomfort.
Through BetterWay’s newly developed method, a pea-sized blood sample is drawn from a patient’s fingertip. The simplified testing equipment can be used by non-phlebotomists, allowing for access at locations like grocery stores and pharmacies.
“We’re enabling new people to offer different kinds of health care, which ultimately pushes that health care out closer to where consumers are,” BetterWay founder Eric Olson told Community Impact.
The alternative testing method was incubated through the 2010s, aimed at finding a new way to collect high-quality capillary blood. Olson said the business is meant to center around individual patients, rather than other interests, with affordable results.
Clinical trials that started in 2020 found the method is clinically equivalent to testing through conventional blood draws. BetterWay’s fingertip testing launched in Austin last spring.
“It’s been a long process of inventing, developing the fundamental technology, validating that it works, and getting the collection device technology through [Food and Drug Administration] review and approved for the market,” Olson said.
The approach
BetterWay testing is now available at more than two dozen locations, including Lakeline and Round Rock Sam’s Clubs as of March. The business now aims to build partnerships across the health care sector.
“There’s a lot of demand from health systems who want to distinguish themselves by stepping up the way that their blood collection experience works, providing a new option for people that are afraid of needles, are afraid of blood ... or people that just don’t want to go out of their way to a lab that’s far away and doesn’t have the best customer service,” Olson said.
BetterWay was also recognized in this year’s South by Southwest Innovation Awards competition, where the testing concept won the Health and Biotech field.
The specifics
From standard primary care to chronic disease monitoring, offerings include metabolic panels, blood counts, and analysis for diabetes, high cholesterol and prostate cancer. The testing menu expanded in April to over 60 available options.
Samples can be paid for out of pocket or through a doctor covered by insurance, with tests starting at $15 up to $49. Results are processed at BetterWay’s federally-certified North Austin laboratory and typically available in one or two days.
