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Hello and welcome to The Excerpt.

I'm Dana Taylor.

Today is Thursday, November 14th, 2024, and this is a special episode of the excerpt.

DIY medical tests offer the convenience of monitoring your health at home, but also come

with ethical and medical concerns. While the test may expand swift access to data,

some carry the risk of misdiagnosis. Still against the backdrop of high

medical costs and an imbalance of access to care, is there reason to be optimistic about the

future of DIY medical tests? Here to discuss the potential ramifications of technology

that may bypass expert medical advice is Dr. Karen Kahl, Chair of Pathology at Endeavor

Health North Shore Hospitals. Thanks for being on the excerpt, Dr. Kahl. Thank you for having me.

Let's start with existing DIY medical tests, such as home pregnancy tests and COVID tests.

What are some of the more established DIY tests that are

accepted by the medical community? I think in the recent years, mostly due to COVID, we've

become much more comfortable with patients collecting things on their own at home. We've certainly

all learned how to swab our noses in the last few years. Some of that may be for a

totally at-home test, but sometimes we were delivering that sample to a hospital laboratory

where it could be analyzed more fully. And these appear to work well. They're integrated into

the rest of our health care system so that physicians are reviewing and using this information

on a day-to-day basis, quite

honestly, for taking care of their patients. I want to turn now to the potentially diminished

...