Home Run to Health

The market for diagnostic apps, home test kits and rehabilitative equipment, presents immense profit potential. Entrepreneurs share their development plans while medical experts caution integration of such kits and devices with specialist care.

- Grace Ma

The growing awareness of our responsibility for our own well-being, especially with the proliferation of health apps and the widespread availability of information, has sparked a billion-dollar personal health industry, from home-use test kits and equipment to anonymous STD-detecting apps.

Genetics sequencing or DNA test kits is one of them. In 2019, genetics and diagnostic health testing company Prenetics launched CircleDNA, a noninvasive kit that can deliver over 500 insights across 20 categories, including one’s risk of inheriting cancers and diseases, through the analysis of a saliva sample. Its use of entertainment celebrities and social media influencers as endorsement tools may have raised a few eyebrows, it nevertheless scored a coup when its Covidtesting kits were approved and adopted by the Hong Kong and UK governments at their airports and for testing players and staff in the English Premier League.

In 2022, it became the first Hong Kong-based unicorn to list on Nasdaq following a merger with blank check company Artisan Acquisition Corp. It also launched two new home-test kits in response to an increased demand for cancer screening in Hong Kong: ColoClear is a non-invasive stool DNA test for the early detection of colorectal cancer, and Circle SnapShot is a painless blood test. It even has a new advanced DNA test for dogs called CirclePaw.