Pharmacy POC Lab Testing Growth Underscores Virtue
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- Pharmacy services developer Avricore Health is building its network of lab-grade testing and reporting for select conditions in an effort to make “actionable health information more accessible for everyone”
- Avricore’s trademarked platform, HealthTab, sustains a growing trend that is counting on community pharmacists to serve their local populations by providing testing to rapidly assess medical conditions
- The HealthTab platform is cooperative with numerous partners to create an end-to-end testing experience
- The company aims to be in 600 locations by the end of 2023, and recently expanded its accessibility by opening five new locations in British Columbia
Avricore Health (TSX.V: AVCR) (OTCQB: AVCRF) is increasing access to the innovations of its walk-in pharmacy diagnostic technology thanks to the company’s expansion from key cities in Canada’s eastern locales to sites on the western seaboard, where Avricore hopes to diversify the profile of patients using its service.
The addition of five British Columbia outlets through Avricore’s pilot partnership with nationwide pharmaceutical chain Shoppers Drug Mart is expected to serve as an early booster stage for the company’s plans to serve 600 locations by the end of 2023 (https://nnw.fm/YfOqz). Shoppers Drug Mart’s large networks includes the potential of 1,800 pharmacies across Canada, and between Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., there are opportunities for placement in about 110,000 pharmacies overall.
Avricore’s announcement last month included news that it had completed the rollout of its point of care platform for providing lab-quality results regarding pre-diabetes. The platform is trademarked as HealthTab, a communications network that draws on data from blood samples and other fluids gathered at trademarked ID Now kiosks (Abbott Diagnostics) using the Piccolo Xpress chemistry analyzer (Abaxis Global Diagnostics).
Avricore’s technology has the flexibility to work with an array of new partners to detect additional medical conditions from additional populations as time progresses, utilizing the professional skills of neighborhood pharmacists to oversee the process and sharing the data with the patient, the patient’s medical providers, and researchers interested in advancing science with the help of the identification-free information.
The Pharmaceutical Journal recently noted that community pharmacies in England dispense more than 1 billion prescriptions each year, and yet a significant number of patients may suffer adverse reactions to the drugs or simply find them ineffective, which is giving rise to more service oriented approached, like testing, to establish a more personalized approach to prescriptions suited to patients’ individual capacities to benefit from them.
“There are 11,400 community pharmacies in England that are less than a 20-minute walk from home for 89% of people,” the Journal states, citing a Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee report (https://nnw.fm/nNFwL). “…part of the natural evolution of the role of the community pharmacist, from dispensing medicines to providing an increasing number of clinical pharmacy services. Feasibility was underlined by the fact that the service is comparable to existing community pharmacy services (e.g. the influenza vaccination service) and therefore not too onerous.”
A Pharmacy Times report earlier this year on the Pharmacy Development Services (“PDS”) 2021 conference’s discussion of point-of-care testing also cited statistics derived from a group A streptococcal (group A strep) testing program in which 278 out of 316 tested patients were found eligible to gain condition management through their pharmacy, and of that number almost half (44 percent) visited the pharmacy during hours in which a physician’s office would be closed, and 43 percent reported having no primary care provider (https://nnw.fm/hjtPy).
“We’ve demonstrated a unique resilience by remaining focused on our goal of creating the world’s largest rapid testing network in pharmacy,” Avricore Health CEO Hector Bremner stated in a June news release (https://nnw.fm/jLsPW). “We are well on our way to making actionable health information more accessible for everyone and dramatically expanding our network in the coming months.”
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.AvricoreHealth.com.
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