The Diagnostic Frontier: Why Test Strips Are the Dark Horse of Decentralized Healthcare
By Dr. Eric Topol, MD, Venture Partner
A Doctor’s Instinct, an Investor’s Eye
As both a practicing physician and a venture investor in life sciences, I’ve learned to trust two things: biology doesn’t wait, and the market doesn’t forgive inefficiency. That’s why I believe Test Strip—and the diagnostic test strip category more broadly—is one of the most underestimated, undervalued opportunities in decentralized healthcare today.
In an age obsessed with AI-enabled wearables, home labs, and synthetic biology, the humble test strip often gets dismissed as low-tech or commoditized. That is a mistake. Test strips are cheap, scalable, actionable, and primed for AI-integration, making them the dark horse of patient-centered diagnostics.
The Diagnostic Bottleneck: Why Simplicity Wins
Let’s start with the clinical reality: diagnostics guide 70% of clinical decisions, yet remain the most underutilized and centralized piece of care delivery. As a physician, I’ve seen this play out too many times. A patient with vague symptoms delays seeking care, ends up in urgent care, gets labs, and waits days for results—all while problems worsen or resolve without clarity.
Now imagine that same patient has a Test Strip panel at home, much like a glucose meter or pregnancy test. In minutes, they screen for markers of UTI, hydration status, kidney function, or hormone imbalance—and with a paired app, they get contextual advice or even provider escalation. No lab draws, no waiting, no missed early interventions.
From Chemical Reaction to Digital Insight
Here’s where things get interesting from an investor’s standpoint.
The raw chemistry behind a test strip is often century-old technology: reagent-on-substrate colorimetric reaction. But when paired with machine vision, mobile apps, and AI-based interpretation, this becomes a data acquisition platform, not just a test.
“The future of diagnostics will hinge on delivering insight at the edge—fast, interpretable, and in the hands of the patient.”
— Dr. Eric Topol
This turns a $0.50 piece of paper into an intelligent triage layer, deployed at scale.
Value Arbitrage: Comparing Test Strip to “Sexy” Startups
As an investor, I evaluate diagnostics companies across four axes:
Category Cost per Test Time to Result Hardware Required Data-to-Insight Capability Genomic Sequencing $200–$1,000 2–10 days Yes (lab) High, but delayed AI-Enabled Wearables $150+ device Continuous Yes (device) Moderate (passive) Home Blood Collection $50–$200 1–3 days Yes (kits + mail) Moderate (lagged) Smart Test Strips <$1 <2 minutes Phone camera High (instant, contextual)
Test Strip’s model has minimal customer acquisition friction (low price point, familiar form factor), zero centralized lab dependency, and near-infinite scalability. In short, it’s data-rich, low-latency, and CAPEX-light—a rare combination.
Why Now: Timing the Inflection Point
Three converging tailwinds make now the ideal time to bet on smart test strips:
1. AI on the Edge
Mobile neural networks (e.g., TensorFlow Lite, Apple CoreML) allow image analysis and pattern recognition to run locally on smartphones. This eliminates the need for cloud compute or internet access in many settings, enabling global deployment—even in bandwidth-limited regions.
2. Rising Healthcare Consumerization
Patients now expect self-service diagnostics, particularly post-COVID. From home COVID tests to glucose monitors, the public has been trained to trust in-home results. Test Strip expands that expectation to a broader menu.
3. Payers + Providers Want Cost Offload
Value-based care incentives demand early intervention and avoidance of acute events. A $1 test strip that prevents a $3,000 ER visit is a no-brainer, and that’s without even discussing chronic care (diabetes, CKD, women’s health, etc.).
Platforms, Not Products: The Real Business Model
What makes Test Strip especially compelling is its platform potential.
Yes, it starts with diagnostic panels. But over time, the company is building:
A longitudinal health dataset rich in real-world biomarkers
A software layer that contextualizes results for patients and clinicians
A referral and affiliate network tied to providers, payers, and pharmacies
A predictive analytics engine to flag at-risk populations for earlier outreach
In short: the test strip is a Trojan horse. The real moat is the data flywheel.
Underserved Markets and Global Scale
As a doctor, I’ve worked in both urban hospitals and rural clinics. Many of the communities that suffer most from diagnostic delays are under-resourced, immobile, or mistrustful of traditional healthcare.
Test Strip’s model is uniquely suited to:
Rural areas with limited lab access
Developing markets with constrained infrastructure
Populations avoiding care due to cost, stigma, or access barriers
“When access to care becomes universal, the diagnostic supply chain must follow suit—strip-based tools can close that final mile.”
— Dr. Eric Topol
The company’s low distribution costs and mobile interface make it a perfect fit for global health scale-up, potentially in partnership with public health agencies and NGOs.
Risks and How to Manage Them
As both a clinician and investor, I never ignore risk. The main challenges include:
Regulatory hurdles (FDA/CE clearance for clinical use)
False positives/negatives leading to over- or under-treatment
User error in strip handling or app use
These are real, but manageable. Most strips are Class II devices—a known regulatory pathway. And with smart app design and built-in QA checks (e.g., lighting validation, timer synchronization), error rates can be minimized.
Test Strip gives me, as a clinician, what I’ve always wanted: a fast, cheap, actionable diagnostic that meets patients where they are, not where the clinic is. It enables proactive care, better triage, and less guessing.
I see a high-margin, scalable, data-generating engine wrapped in an easily adoptable consumer format. It’s underpriced compared to the data and decision support it unlocks. If diagnostics are the gatekeepers of modern healthcare, Test Strip is quietly building the fastest, smartest gate.
In a world where everyone is chasing AI unicorns and genomic moonshots, don’t overlook the simple, scalable substrate that can deliver billions of touchpoints every year.
This is the diagnostic frontier. And Test Strip is already there.