BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), announced it has completed the acquisition of privately held Scanwell Health Inc., a provider of smartphone-enabled at-home medical tests.
BD collaborated with Scanwell to develop the app used with the recently launched BD Veritor At-Home COVID-19 Test, the first at-home COVID-19 test that uniquely uses a smartphone camera and app to capture and interpret results, eliminating the human subjectivity in other visually read at-home antigen tests. Scanwell will become the foundational digital platform upon which BD plans to develop at-home diagnostic tests for a range of infectious diseases including COVID-19/influenza A+B, group A strep and additional menu for detecting infections and managing chronic disease.
The Scanwell app is a key differentiator in the market for at-home COVID-19 testing. To date, no other company uses the phone's camera to capture the image of the test that is then analyzed and interpreted by the app.
Other COVID-19 home tests use smartphones as part of their process, but according to the BD press release, their Veritor At-Home COVID-19 Test is the first and only test to use the smartphone as the analyzer to digitally interpret the test results and provide a definitive POSITIVE or NEGATIVE digital display of testing results.
The app also has the capabilities to securely store and report test results to organizations, including businesses, public health authorities and schools. The results of tests are stored in the app and can be referenced and displayed at any time by simply logging into the app.
