Fitness technology company WHOOP has opened its Advanced Labs blood-testing service to all US consumers, creating another commercial channel through which patients can purchase clinical laboratory tests without first visiting their regular physicians.
The service, previously limited to WHOOP members, starts at $150 and does not require ownership of the company’s wearable device. Quest Diagnostics performs the testing, with blood collection available at approximately 2,000 locations across the country.
Results are delivered through WHOOP’s application along with personalized recommendations generated using artificial intelligence and reviewed by clinicians, TechRadar reported. Data from Apple Watches, Garmin devices, and Oura Rings will not be integrated into the WHOOP platform.
“Today, we’re opening WHOOP Advanced Labs to everyone in the US—no WHOOP membership required,” WHOOP founder and CEO Will Ahmed stated on LinkedIn.
Galleri test added to consumer offering
WHOOP also is offering consumers access to Grail’s Galleri multi-cancer early detection test. Galleri analyzes blood for molecular signals associated with more than 50 cancer types and attempts to predict the cancer’s tissue of origin. It is not intended to replace established cancer-screening procedures.
Galleri is currently marketed as a laboratory-developed test (LDT) and has not been cleared or approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). LDTs are tests that an individual lab develops and runs in-house as authorized under CLIA. Such tests can’t be sold as kits to other clinical labs. All Galleri testing is handled by Grail within its CLIA-certified lab in North Carolina.
Grail has applied for FDA premarket approval for Galleri, and the agency plans to convene an outside advisory panel to review the test.
The WHOOP expansion demonstrates how consumer technology companies are building businesses around clinical laboratory data rather than limiting themselves to fitness and wellness measurements collected by wearable devices. Such arrangements can provide laboratories with access to new groups of self-paying customers while allowing technology companies to incorporate laboratory results into their proprietary health platforms.
Clinical laboratory leaders may want to watch how these partnerships affect test ordering, result interpretation, patient follow-up, and ownership of longitudinal health data. As more consumer brands add clinical testing, laboratories could increasingly find themselves supplying the underlying diagnostic services while another company controls the patient relationship.
This article was created with the assistance of Generative AI and has undergone editorial review before publishing.
