Rx trends 2015: Pharmacy-based diagnostic screenings

NEW YORK — Will patient screenings and advanced, gene-based diagnostics become a standard and universally accepted part of community pharmacy’s service platform? Absolutely, and sooner rather than later, many industry experts predict.

 

For retail pharmacies, point-of-care testing services are “going to be bigger than immunizations,” said Michael Klepser, professor of pharmacy practice at Ferris State University. 

 

Behind Klepser’s assertion are some indisputable facts driving the embrace of pharmacy-based diagnostics by patients, pharmacists and physicians. The shrinking pool of overburdened family doctors is shifting more primary care services to pharmacists, just as the field of genomics explodes and rapid advances in diagnostic technology put cheap, easy-to-use screening tools into the hands of pharmacists. 

 

With the rapid growth of gene-specific testing services, pharmacists can simply take a swab of a patient’s cheek and send the saliva sample to a lab for genetic profiling and diagnosis. And a nanotech-enabled platform called GeneRADAR — from a company called Nanobiosym — provides almost instant diagnosis of any disease or wellness biomarker from a drop of a patient’s blood on a device roughly the size of a smart phone.

 

Meanwhile, health plan payers are on a desperate quest to cut costs with alternative-site patient screenings and more rapid diagnosis and treatment of diseases. There’s also “a greater focus by risk-based providers on getting high-cost diseases diagnosed early [for] timely evidence-based treatment,” said Doug Long, VP industry relations for IMS Health.

 

The American Pharmacists Association agrees. “Consumer demand for pharmacogenetic testing is growing, and the interpretation of results by pharmacists or prescribers regarding pharmacogenetic tests may soon become a part of routine clinical practice,” APhA said.