Physicians don’t mind patients choosing at-home testing options over coming in for an in-person clinic visit—in fact, they overwhelmingly support it, according to the results of a new survey.
Ixlayer’s report this week is based on a poll of more than 140 U.S. physicians representing a variety of specialties. All together, nearly 90% agreed that at-home tests are more convenient to many patients and can improve access to diagnostic care, and almost as many said they believe offering at-home testing options can help speed up diagnoses and, ultimately, improve patient outcomes.
“There is a large subset of my patients where making routine office visits is difficult, either complicated by age, travel time, costs, or time constraints. So I see having a convenient, at-home solution as a plus for improving medical care,” one of the survey’s respondents said.
The overwhelming majority of the doctors surveyed, 91% of the group, said they were open to providing at-home testing kits to their patients, and 80% agreed that the remote tests could support or even enhance the healthcare system’s existing workflows.
As for their thoughts on the tests themselves, just under two-thirds of the physicians said they believe at-home tests are reliable and that their methods for generating results are trustworthy. And most of them, 84%, said it’s important to have at-home test results automatically sent to their offices.
With the survey’s results affirming the majority of doctors’ openness to more widespread at-home diagnostic testing, Ixlayer suggested that biopharma companies have a major opportunity to integrate at-home test services into their disease awareness campaigns and other work connecting patients to care.
“Given the robust support from physicians for at-home testing to facilitate quicker and more informed healthcare decisions, biopharma companies should seize this valuable opportunity to reach more patients, decrease time to diagnosis and better support positive outcomes,” Matthew Walsh, general manager of biopharma at Ixlayer, said in a statement.