For the fans watching sports at home, you can wear the same jerseys, don the same shoes and now, take the same COVID test as your favorite team.
After being tapped by sports stadiums and professional athletes, Cue Health is now planning to kick off a nationwide, direct-to-consumer launch of its cartridge-based self-test this month, alongside a virtual health platform that will provide access to electronic prescription services and digital results that can help clear the user for travel, according to a statement.
The NBA and Major League Baseball have been using the Fierce 15 winner’s screeners to help safeguard its players and staff. Organizations like Google and the Mayo Clinic have also leveraged the company's test.
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The company’s 20-minute COVID test was the first molecular diagnostic to receive an FDA green light for at-home use without a prescription. The test has matched up with lab-based PCR tests 97.8% of the time in clinical studies.
"We've had a lot of interest from the general public eager to purchase our COVID-19 tests: from parents who need to keep their kids healthy in school to international business travelers to families who want to gather safely this holiday season,” Cue's co-founder and chief product officer, Clint Sever, said in the statement.
The new online membership program, Cue+—available for $50 to $90 per month—offers scheduled shipments of COVID test refills and remotely supervised screenings as well as connections to digital prescriptions such as upcoming antiviral medications for the coronavirus.
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The telehealth platform, opening November 15, also sets the stage for additional physician-ordered tests in the future. This includes a slate of planned at-home diagnostics for infections such as influenza, respiratory syncytial virus and strep throat as well as tests for cholesterol and blood sugar levels. All will be designed to run on interchangeable cartridges with the Cue Reader device.
Earlier this year, Cue raised $235 million in venture capital funding to help prepare its business for a post-pandemic world. CEO Ayub Khattak describes distributed, digital-first diagnostics as one of the last missing pieces for offering effective virtual healthcare. Before the spread of COVID-19, Cue had been gearing up to offer home tests for the flu.
The company has since added another $200 million to that total, going public in September through a Nasdaq IPO.
“We’ll be investing more to grow our menu of tests, we’ll be investing to expand our production capacity, to add additional software and services and to further build out the team, and this IPO positions us to make those investments,” Sever said in an interview with Fierce Medtech’s Andrea Park.