Interview
4 09 2007An Interview with Ken Adams, president and chief executive officer of Home Health Testing®
Question: I read on your Web site that your company has been around since 1996. How many home health tests were available then and how has the market changed?
Home Health Testing® is one of the pioneers offering home medical test kits on the Internet. When we first started in 1996, home tests pretty much consisted of urinary drug tests, tobacco tests and alcohol tests. Beleaguered parents doing their best to keep their children away from drugs, tobacco and alcohol have always been and still is an important segment of our market. We recently introduced a substance identification test that we import from Israel that will allow a parent to identify a suspected drug or drug residue on any surface such a person’s desk top. Hair follicle drug tests are also popular with parents.
The biggest growth in the market has been the addition of people who are looking for the type of medical test that you would typically obtain from your doctor such as cholesterol tests, colon cancer tests, anemia tests and allergy tests. We now offer a very wide variety of confidential and accurate self-tests that you perform in the privacy and convenience of your home. Our tests insure your complete anonymity while providing you with test results that rival the accuracy of those performed in clinical laboratories.
Question: When and why would you say the growth in the home health test/diagnostic test market really started to grow, and what do you think was the cause for that growth?
The American public is well educated and very independently minded. They like the idea of being able to participate in the management of their own health care. The medical community works very hard and quite often does not have the time to answer the myriad of questions their customers (patients) pose to them. The Internet has filled that void as the Internet is all about information. Once people learned how to navigate their way through the electronic maze, they have discovered a treasure trove of medical information at their finger tips.
Question: It looks as though the company only sells FDA-approved medical home test kits - is that correct? How many different tests do you sell, who manufactures them and what are some of the more popular ones?
Home Health Testing® sells a wide variety of FDA approved home medical tests exclusively on the Internet. For both ethical and legal reasons, we will not sell any medical test that has not been approved by the FDA for home use. We watch the market very closely and once a medical test receives FDA home use approval, we evaluate the product and consider its addition to our product line. We now sell over 30 different home use medical tests purchased from over 20 different manufacturers and certified laboratories.
A test that we recently introduced and are very excited about is a coronary heart disease test. This test is a high sensitivity c-reactive protein test (hs-CRP) that detects inflammation in the body. Inflammation quite often is a precursor to hardening of the arteries and coronary heart disease.
Originally, most medical tests that had been approved by the FDA for home use had their start as FDA approved medical tests for professional use only. Once the tests had established a proven track record in the hands of professionals, the manufacturers simplified the instructions and resubmitted the tests to the FDA for home use approval. Now that the home medical test market has grown and established itself, we are starting to see medical tests introduced directly into the home market without first going through the professional use route.
Many of the more popular home medical tests are the same tests that would be ordered by a doctor upon an initial patient visit such as a PSA screen for potential prostate cancer, a TSH test for potential thyroid problems or an FSH test to help determine if a woman has begun menopause.
For privacy and/or embarrassment concerns, there are a few tests that people only want to perform in their home such as the male infertility test. Most men simply do not want to go into a doctor’s office to produce a sperm sample.
Some of the tests that we sell are difficult to find in your local pharmacy as there is a stigma associated with purchasing them such as an HIV test or hepatitis C test. Many people do not want to be seen purchasing these tests in public.
We also offer a range of hormone tests that for some reason are difficult to obtain from many doctors such as a female hormone test, a male hormone test, a sleep hormone test and an antioxidant test. Then there is my favorite, a very unique mineral test that tests your hair for the presence of 11 minerals and 9 toxic elements.
There are other tests that have become a routine part of our lives and fit well into the home market such as cholesterol tests, colon cancer tests, hemoglobin A1c and kidney function tests for diabetic patients, UTI or urinary tract infection tests and pregnancy and ovulation tests.
Question: Can you tell me anything about increases in sales or revenue over the past few years?
Data in that regard is hard to come by as most companies in the home medical test industry are privately held such as ours. We have seen sales growth in the 8% to 10% range consistently over the last 10 years but I would not even hazard a guess as to the total size of the market.
Question: Some in the medical community have expressed concerns about consumers relying too heavily on these types of tests, potentially causing them to skip doctor’s visits, for instance. What is your response to that?
The established medical community for a variety of reasons was almost universally opposed to home medical tests when they first started to appear about 10 years ago. What has been found however is that more people are now seeing their doctor because they got an unfavorable test result at home. In a few instances the home test result was erroneous due to procedural errors but many times the home test got the patient into their doctor’s offices early enough before their problem became serious, which of course is a good thing. Overall, the medical community is now generally supportive of home use medical tests.
Question: Just out of curiosity- how does it work that your company is based in Florida and you are based in Thailand?
Home Health Testing® has an office in Florida that handles product fulfillment, phone orders and customer service matters as well as IT personnel to handle our Internet needs. I relocated to Thailand with my laptop computer in hand to be with my Thai wife and her family. I manage the company from here via the Internet, returning briefly to the United States every year. If you are really interested, visit our blog Thai Thoughts to get “the inside scoop on living in Thailand with photos and commentary from Khun Ken”.
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Categories : FDA Approved Home Medical Tests
