PROACTIVE CARE
From celiac disease to COVID, company is pioneering at-home health tests
Just the thought of finding time to go to the doctor, making an appointment and waiting for lab work stresses out Missy Beasley. The Spring resident is a busy mom and co-owns CORE Health and Fitness with her husband, Ty Beasley. When she is not teaching a boot camp, she’s guiding a client through their nutrition plan as a registered dietitian.
Health is Beasley’s passion — but it’s not always easy to fit her personal concerns into her schedule.
For the past few years, Beasley has struggled with regular headaches. One of her boot camp clients suggested she try an allergy test with imaware — a company that offers at-home tests — to see if food or respiratory allergens could be at the root.
Beasley signed up. And after a quick finger prick, she mailed the test back for analysis.
“I had my results in like two days,” she said. “It was extremely convenient.”
Beasley learned that she had
no food or respiratory allergies. Now, having eliminated this potential, she feels more empowered for her next doctor’s visit.
“I like the fact that I’m in control,” she said.
Health care instead of sick care
Beasley’s story is exactly what Austin resident Jani Tuomi had in mind when he founded imaware in 2018.
He knew several people were struggling to find the causes of health concerns but felt powerless on their wellness journeys.
Tuomi wanted to put patients in the driver’s seat. But there was a problem.
“I had no health care training,” said Tuomi, who earned his bachelor’s in mathematics from the University of Waterloo and later worked as vice president of a technology firm in Canada. “I’m a computer science student who worked in production and data.”
Still, he was confident that technology could empower consumers, including individuals who wanted better medical care.
“Doctors are really good at sick care,” Tuomi said. “If you have a symptom or pain or something happens, then, the doctors can fix you. But that doesn’t fit the definition of health care.”
He began working with doctors to develop tests that would make it easier to become proactive about their own health. He launched imaware in 2017 with a $99 at-home test for celiac disease. He explained that individuals with autoimmune disease often struggle with diagnosis and treatment.
“We’re not trying to replace doctors,” Tuomi said. “We want to equip patients — so they can go to their doctors with more knowledge and more data.”
Before long, the tests expanded to rheumatoid arthritis and heart disease. Now, clients can sign up for screening blood sugar and cholesterol or checking thyroid and testosterone levels.
Having knowledge leads to prevention and smarter treatment, Tuomi said. Everything was moving forward and imaware’s menu of services were expanding.
“Then COVID arrived,” Tuomi said.
Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3
Shortly after news of the coronavirus arrived in Houston, Tuomi began to ask, “Can we do an athome
test for COVID?”
“There was no national testing strategy,” he said. “A lot of people thought COVID would be a small case. We saw it starting to expand and we wanted to help. And we already had doctors, nurses and tests.”
Soon, imaware was approved to begin offering their product. Tuomi contacted Deborah Moore, assistant director to the Houston Health Department.
“They reached out to us when we had early signs that COVID was really going to be a problem in our community,” Moore recalled. “They made us aware that they had the ability to do at-home COVID testing.”
That was particularly interesting to the department, she explained, because of concerns about elderly or disabled citizens who would not be able to go in person to testing sites.
“Being tested in their home was much more attractive to them,” Moore said.
After assessing the option with her team, the Houston Health Department moved forward.
“We felt like, let’s try it,” she said. “It began as a pilot. We authorized them to test a small number of older adults, and they passed muster. We struck up a partnership.”
The company and health department have now worked together since last June and have tested about 1,000 elderly adults or individuals with disabilities in their own homes.
“Some of our population are homebound, and they could not get out
even if they wanted to,” Moore said. “imaware fit that niche perfectly. Before we even recognized how big the issue was, we had the opportunity to get in front of it.”
The company also had the ability to deploy staff to senior housing complexes, she added.
“Having a partner willing to do that, and provide the testing, is one of the strategies that helped us a lot,” she said.
Having already developed the at-home tests for other conditions made it easier to switch gears for COVID, Tuomi said.
“We launched it in eight days,” he said. “We had built 98 percent of it beforehand, with no idea COVID would hit.”
And that offered further proof of the concept.
“It was validating for me,” he said. “The platform can help people, and that’s the most important thing.”
A new normal — for health
COVID-19 also validated the need to detect and treat underlying conditions, Tuomi explained.
“Going forward, we have to all think about health and prevention,” he said. “We’ve got to get more prevention-oriented.”
Making that shift in health care has been a longtime pursuit of Dr. Ford Brewer, a preventative and occupational medicine specialist based in Lexington. He joined imaware last year as medical adviser.
Brewer had promoted telemedicine for decades, before COVID-19 made it the norm; he also had
been working in the startup of diagnostic apps.
“The real crux of medicine and prevention is chronic disease,” Brewer said.
His mission was to make it simpler to discover health concerns, such as diabetes and heart disease.
“The doctors were ready, the technology was there and ready, and the need was there,” he said. “Then COVID happened, and it’s quickly becoming a standard.”
The missing piece, however, was the availability of lab testing, Brewer explained. Then, he discovered Tuomi, and they began working together.
“It’s a big deal for people to start getting information about their bodies from the comfort of their own home,” he said.
In February, imaware conducted a study asking 1,000 individuals across the U.S. how their health care habits have changed since the pandemic, learning that more patients are interested in at-home care. About 65 percent of survey respondents said they would prefer to have their blood work checked at home.
Tuomi said that the results of the survey show that individuals value having easily accessible health care options, which he is confident will remain true long after the pandemic.
Dr. Jake Kushner serves as medical director of McNair Interests, a private investment and management company headquartered in Houston, an investor in imaware.
“This company will bring testing directly to consumers,” he said. “I view this as a visionary idea.”
Before joining McNair Interests, Kushner served as chief of pediatric diabetes and endocrinology at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital.
He said that when patients are more proactive about their health, doctors benefit.
He explained that during the pandemic, telemedicine allowed patients to rethink traditional health care. And he doesn’t think the demand will go away. “I don’t see it reversing,” he said. “Once consumers know they can get tests delivered in the mailbox, why would they want to go out to a lab?”
At-home tests can also eliminate barriers to health care, he said. Rural communities benefit from not having to drive a long distance to a doctor, and the availability of à la carte tests can help keep costs low.
“That’s next-generation medicine,” he said. “That’s something we’ll see more and more of.”
Tuomi expects to add more tests to the menu at imaware. Making them more affordable and getting results rapidly are also high priorities.
He envisions a day when health care could be like auto insurance, where consumers can shop around for the best programs and have more options. In the meantime, providing individuals more information about their health in their own homes remains his goal.
“We’re pretty good at doing things when we have data,” Tuomi said. “If your car gets to 20,000 miles, you get an oil change. If your fire alarm starts to beep, you replace the battery. We’ll keep making that shift in health care.”