Why At-Home Testing Needs a Complete Care Pathway

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0:01 Hello there. Welcome to the first episode of Zero Friction, Removing Barriers from Revenue Growth. I'm your host, Terry Coutsolioutsos, the founder of RevRx AI. Today, I'm excited. I'm joined by Nathalya Mamane, the CEO and co-founder of Anywhere Diagnostics. We'll discuss her journey in diagnostics, the mission behind her company, Anywhere Diagnostics, and the challenges of bringing innovation into healthcare. Nathalya, we're very excited to have you, and welcome to Zero Friction. So, Nathalya, tell us a little bit about yourself and and the company. So, I'm the co-founder and CEO of Anywhere Diagnostics, where we are truly on a on a mission to democratize diagnostics by changing access or activating more access with affordability to the consumer, so that they can test when they need it, where they need it, anywhere they need it, affordably and accessibly.

We have developed this technology in a diagnostic solution that will allow people to test for a variety of different diseases from the comfort of their own home, when they need it, and with very, very high sensitivity for reliability. And we're doing this um with the most in the most challenging way. And how I got to building a company that is so challenging, but the most challenging way is to create a test that allows you to that is consumer-based, so that's consumer-friendly, but that is at such a low cost that anybody can afford it. And being able to do that, being able to do a lab-grade test, a lab-grade quality test um at at the price tag that we're looking for is really what's proving to be quite challenging, but realistic, and we're we're making it happen.

Well, that's great. And so, you're talking about bringing the all this innovation to the diagnostic marketplace, bringing something that's disrupted, that's virtually accepted, and can be accessible by everybody. So, tell me about your journey into this diagnostic world because I think this is a really interesting angle. So, it was interesting because I'm not from the space at all. People always think about like what are you doing? I I actually have two lives. And we're going to And And my And my sort of like point of of change was when I decided to do to my MBA in 2019. I started in 2019.

2:35 So, prior to that, I actually was an event planner and worked in And I had my own business in for about I was in the industry for about 18 years. I had my own business in event planning um for about 13 or 14 years. And um just felt that it wasn't, you know, meaningful to me. It wasn't impactful to me anymore. I was good at it, but it wasn't just It wasn't fulfilling me. So, I couldn't figure out what to do next. Of course, everybody needs some pivot in their life. I decided mine was a complete 180.

Um and so, I decided I'm going to go back to school. Let me learn and let me see what I've missed out on. I was 45 years old and I had four kids. One was out of the house, the other ones were home, and trying to kind of figure it out and say I'm going to learn and see where that takes me. I actually had no preconceived goals or I had no idea what this was going to take me, but I was just going to go.

And I hadn't been in a classroom for a long time, so I really had to truly understand what it meant to write a paper all over again, which I hadn't done in a very long time. You don't write paper in event planning. And so, I went back to school and one of the classes, which is a very typical class in in in MBA program, is to create a or an idea of a company and develop it. So, you learn accounting, you apply accounting to your idea. You learn marketing, you apply marketing. That's sort of like how it goes. Very typical, very standard. So, I'm here with my team trying to figure out what is going to be our business idea and I think back at that very moment, I think back about having sat in a room of a thousand people hearing the founder of Waze. And he basically started off with saying, "The best ideas come from the biggest pain points." And he hated traffic. He just couldn't stand being in traffic. So, he figured

Out a solution cuz his problem is probably a lot of people's problems. So, I thought about my life and I thought about, well, what's my biggest pain point? And we have a lot of pain points, but the one that really triggered me was waking up and then a given morning or weekend and one of my kids being sick and wondering, "What is my day going to look like?" And having to rush to find a doctor at any point in time to get them tested for whatever it could be. Generally, or at the time, they only tested for strep throat. So, testing them for strep throat and then finding out whether it's strep, I get antibiotics. If it's not strep, I do nothing and this was a complete waste of time.

5:18 So, that was my biggest pain point because once disease hit a fam- once disease hits a family of four, it almost like it feels like it never goes away. Like, it just sort of like stays It just cycles through every human. If only they all came at the same time, but no. One has to get better and then the other one has to come, right? I remember once when my kids were younger, I had like a bottle of antibiotics for all four of them at the same time. Like, because as you finish one, you get the next one. In any case, so that was my biggest pain point. My biggest pain point is having to go through the process of getting my my kids evaluated for some common, you know, common illness, generally strep or the flu or anything like that.

And I said, "You know what? Let's do an at-home strep test because if it's not strep, what else would you treat for? It's a virus and then the virus would just go on its own." So, my idea was a strep test and I thought if I had a strep test as a parent, my life would be so much better. Like, like out of control better. So, um my team agreed to follow that idea and we built and we built the idea like in school. We applied accounting, we applied marketing, we applied, you know, business development and what would be sales look like and all the partnerships and what the exit would be like, the typical business plan. And I'm like, "Oh, this is good. Like, I like this. This would be great for me." And you know, as part of the project, you have to like interview all these people and everybody was like, "This would be great. We would love this." And I so, I kind of like

Validated the market through this project. Now, at the same time as I was doing my MBA, my daughter, my eldest daughter, was a senior in college at McGill University in bioengineering. And she overheard me at that point, COVID hit, so I was working from home, she was home, everybody was home, and she overheard me speaking with my team about this thing and she's like, first she makes fun of me and she's like, "Mom, what are you doing? Like, this is not going to work. What are you doing?" And I'm like, "I don't care if it works. I just It just has to be an idea. It doesn't have to work. I'm not the scientist. I just have a good idea." And then she said, she had a cap She had to to her end-of-year project and she's like, "You know, I have to do an end of year project. I'm going to develop it for you." Okay.

And so, it kind of went there. And I'm like, "You do you, I do me. Let's just go on different ways." Like, I I don't have to I have no idea what you're going to do cuz you're a scientist, and you have no idea what I'm doing cuz I'm in business, but this is going to be fun anyway. At the end of the year, I had a legitimate business plan, which I thought was legitimate. I mean, of course, it's evolved over time. And I had a And she had a legitimate proof of concept.

8:10 Correct. And I'm like, "I think we're onto something." And that's really where things took off. So, at that point is when you thought you had a real problem worth solving. Yes. And And a viable product to bring to market. And then you decided, "Hey, let's Now what? Now you have a concept. You have a prototype, and Look at a lot of will and ambition, right? And that Now a lot of will and ambition, but absolutely no idea what to do with it. Okay. So, the first thing we do is we knock on the doors of a whole bunch of like mechanical engineering firms, and they basically tell us, "You don't know what the hell you're doing." Okay.

Um we had no idea we're doing. We didn't know where to start. But, what happened was that I ended up applying to my first accelerator. Okay. Which was out of Babson. So, I graduated from Babson, and I got into this accelerator. And I remember when I got into this first accelerator, I literally thought I won the lottery. Like, hands down, my first yes. Who knew that after that there would be many no's. But, my first yes. And so, through this accelerator, you kind of like learn. You kind of get network, and then you meet people, and you meet more people, and And then from there, and Olivia, my daughter, her name is Olivia, she was sort of like we're trying to figure out what to do. And then through meeting one person to another to another, I met what sort of became my first team, my first team member at the time.

Okay. And then from there got another team member and then from there got another team member and so like then we were like a cohesive team that kind of like led to figuring out how we were going to sort of like start this thing. And then we did. That's cool. Yeah. So what has been your biggest surprise about the diagnostic industry thus far? I mean my biggest surprise is the fact that diagnostic has the worst reputation in this health life sciences space ecosystem. Like Why Why do you say that?

Because I I you know as a parent and just as a person, you would you know the first thing we want to know when there is there are symptoms, any kind of symptoms, is a diagnosis. Right. Right? But what I realized being in here, being in this space, and developing this is that the business side of it, right? Is the fact that it's How do I explain this? There's a diagnostic and there's a therapeutics. And there's a lot more money being made in therapeutics than they are in diagnostics. Okay. So So the general population of investors Mhm.

10:56 Will put their bet on a higher return on a potential higher return than for therapy than they would for diagnostic. And so then you have all this money being raised in therapeutics. Correct. And then the diagnostic part is sort of like it's it would be hinder it, right? Because if you have the right diagnosis, Right. the most accurate diagnosis, then you may not use that therap- Therapy. therapy, right? of broken. The system is completely broken. And I I was like convinced that like who wouldn't want a better diagnostic solution? Who I mean in what world would you just want to just feed people drugs without knowing exactly what they had?

But in fact it doesn't work that way because what they really want us to make money, right? And yes, you have a lot of people who care. But there are there are stakeholders and the stakeholders want their return and there's a bigger return on therapy than there is on diagnostic. And so I was very surprised and it's a battle that I am challenged with every single day. Right. Especially in your quest as you're trying to get your company funded and moving forward and Exactly. we'll talk about that challenge in a little bit.

Yeah. So I do have a signature question for you. Um what is the one lesson that you've learned the hard way? That's kind of shaping how you operate, you and your organization today. Like you've something that you fumbled on or tripped on or a challenge that you've had that you know it's sort of guided you. Yeah. The one thing that I've learned is, you know, I really thought that my personality, my passion, my grit would sort of like open doors for me. When in fact it didn't.

You know, that that is the reason for this, right? But I really thought that with a great idea and grit and passion that you couldn't even reach, right? Um and complete dedication that it would get me a little further. Right. And it's not so obvious because that formula changes with everyone. There's no formula. It's not an advantageous thing. So it's a very hard thing to manage not. Like I'm I'm not going to be I'm not going to misrepresent myself. This is who I am. It I'm from this hospitality space that is so far removed from what we're doing now. And I was afraid of representing myself as somebody who had done that before. So I almost wanted to hide it for a while, but now I'm not doing that anymore. I'm like I have skills that I've acquired from that that actually is exactly where I have to be now that will take me as as far as I want to I can take it.

13:54 I I agree with you and I think the best part of the story is is that you're coming from a place of pain as a consumer. Yeah. Right? And I think that's, you know, some of the best ideas are always drawn from the market itself. So that's a the great story. So for our listeners out there and they're just now hearing about AnywhereDx, can you talk a little bit about it about what you're trying to accomplish? But what is the real mission between you and AnywhereDx in the marketplace and what are you trying to accomplish there?

So ever since I started and now through AnywhereDx, so I just want to make sure we understand my first company was called RT Macro DX and then we sort of like restructured and we structured under a new company called AnywhereDx. So this is where we are now. But from the very beginning we sat on three very, very important pillars. It was accessibility, affordability, and reliability. That was those three things were not movable. They were like set in stone. And so AnywhereDx is is truly trying to transform how we face diagnostic challenges in the marketplace by offering accessible, affordable, and reliable solutions for the consumer to use for, you know, a whole bunch of different indications. One of which, which is what we're beachheading right now, is an at-home strep test.

So, so that you do not need to go to the doctor to get tested for strep, you do not need to go to the doctors to get diagnosed for strep, or even to get treated for strep. You just need to grab a kit from your local pharmacy and test at home using a very different method. The regular method is a throat swab that is invasive. Our method is to use saliva so that it is much more accessible and much more usable for for the consumer and get results that are so reliable that physicians wouldn't have to redo the test for confirmation. And that was very important to me because if you're going to pay for a test, the last thing you want is a doctor to say, "Let me run the test again." So, why don't you come here and all to You've already lost the money and the time to buy the test at the pharmacy or have invested that that money to buy

This test and and then a doctor saying, "I don't really trust it. Why don't you come?" So, like that was not like that was not at all where I was heading. This is not a screening test. This is a diagnostic test where you can test at home and you can get treated from home. And so, and when you say like how do you get treated from home? Well, it's very important for you to know that we want to we're offering the entire service. You buy a test, you get tested, or you test yourself, you test your child your child or your your loved one, and then you get connected to a physician that will confirm and that will treat you and diagnose you. And it's it's the we're streamlining the entire process because what we realize today is 50% of the population, globally by the way, not just here, don't have a got a doctor to go to. They just don't.

17:16 That's a lot of people. So, where do they go? They're forced to go to urgent care or to the ER, costing them so much more than a regular copay. Today's copays are exorbitant prices because of high deductibles. So, we are truly trying to slim things down and simplify things to you buy a test for 25 bucks, you test at home, and and you get treated without ever leaving your home. And that is not so far off from how the pregnancy test started. Sure. Right? That's how it started. It used to be that to you for you to find out if you are pregnant, you'd have to go and pee in a cup at your OB, right? You would have to pee in a cup and then bring it to the pharmacy for them to like test. Right. And then the pregnancy test showed up in the '70s, early '70s, and all of a sudden it like blew up because you could just do it from home. And then

If you were negative, you could do it again, and you can do it again, and you can do it again until you were positive enough call your doctor and say, "By the way, I'm positive." So, and these tests have just gotten gradually better and better and better. So, this is what we are truly trying to get into. Like, this should be the this should be the standard. The standard is don't you don't have to drag a sick child or a sick person to the doctor. You can just test from home. And that goes for strep throat, that goes for UTIs, that goes for STIs, that goes for any of the hep, you know, hepatitis, D uh TB. There's no reason why we couldn't offer the people, consumers, to have more control over when to get tested and how to get tested. You know, it should be on their own terms. It shouldn't be on the terms of a health care system that's already extremely broken.

Yeah, it's way broken. And And so, it's so nice to you're finding a way to create accessibility, affordability, and reliability at home, number one. Number two, it looks like you're doing your homework to get connected into some sort of virtual health piece, right? Whether it's through the but even people who have health plans today, most of the health you can get connected through the phone and Exactly. And so, now you don't even have to leave the house anymore, right? And and you can have your you can have your drugs delivered to your home. So, you might not even have to go anywhere, right? So, at the end of the day, what a what a great experience for the patient where they can get tested, get treated, and get their therapy on one swift motion. So, what a what a great opportunity.

And you know what the problem is today with the telehealth platforms that already exist is that they were great if all you have to do is speak to someone, but it's still broken if you have to get tested. Like, there are no tools for them to still do this at home. They're going to send you to lab like a Quest Diagnostic or a LabCorp office for you to get the proper labs. Now, for some things, it's important, right? For, you know, to find out your cholesterol, to get like there are some tests where I mean, even today you could probably get your cholesterol at home. That will happen, but you know, over time, we just need to bring these solutions closer to the consumer.

20:24 And, you know, the the the word the the concept of having point-of-care diagnostics or point-of-care services is these facilities, the point-of-care. For conven- Right. Right, but now we have to get to point of need. And the need is at home. We need to stay at home. I think about all these um all these older all the the like the older generation that are in like, you know, in how in in in you know, in how senior care yeah. All the senior, you know, they're in senior care. They the poor people, like if they have a UTI, they let them out of their home and take them to the the to PEE IN A CUP. I mean, that's all they're doing is to pee in a cup. Why can't we test this at the facilities there in their home?

It is it it I mean, you could hear from my from you can hear from me like the passion is so real because I see these things every single day. I hear about these things every single day and it breaks my heart because the technology is there for us to use. And we just are and what we're doing is we're using it. And now we just have to just bring it to market. Well, it's a great it's a great pivot point. So, you know, I think that we've talked a lot about the problems you're solving.

Ability What are the biggest friction points that you're finding as, you know, a CEO and co-founder of a disruptive technology, right? So, you probably have a lot of inertia just in general around it. But, what what are the big friction points that you're finding getting to market? Um finding capital. Okay, money, right? Finding capital is is the biggest I think it's the biggest challenge today. We all know everybody's having a hard time finding capital, whether you're in biotech and pharma, but in diagnostic is particularly hard.

Again, because of the, you know, the misconceived lower upside, right? Which I really do think it's a misconception. So, finding capital is very hard. A lot of companies that were in diagnostic left diagnostic and a lot of companies who are not diagnostics do not, you know, are choosing not to even take that on. So, that's the biggest hurdle we're finding because the data is there, the technology is there, the talent is there to develop these things. The infrastructures are definitely there. There is no friction on the side of the physicians at all. Like, they I mean, I spoke to my kids' pediatrician and she's like, "Can you make this happen yesterday?" They're they're they're happy to see their patient, you know, like like this.

23:06 Right. virtually and not have all these sick kids in their, you know, in their waiting room. It's like breeding all these germs. Like the friction is not in the marketplace. It's not even in the ecosystem. The friction is pathways are If you had the money, all that stuff is going to fly through regulatory, the whole thing too, as well, right? Yeah, there's no friction at the regulatory side. There's no friction on the on the ecosystem side with the physicians, with the patients, with the parents, with the There's no friction.

We are not seeing any friction and I can't even tell you there will not be any frictions with these labs because I could even suppose that these labs would want to acquire some of these tests and then have it part of their offering. The future is going in that direction, yet the capital needed to get to reach that kind of the future milestones is still very limited. Got it. So, when you look ahead, like what are you most excited about? Even though you I know that, you know, we're we still got to work through the challenge of getting the funding and then getting the money, right? And getting the capital, but what are you most excited about right now today in moving forward? Tell me.

Today? Yeah, like today. Figuratively today, but like, you know, moving forward. So, we started a crowdfunding campaign with the with the goal of of with two goals in mind. The first one is to raise capital, but mostly is to show early the early the signs of early adoption with parents who want this. And so, my big campaign now is finding, you know, 500 parents who are willing to invest $150. It's not a lot. $150 into this crowdfunding campaign as an early adopter. And what I'm excited about today is that these parents are It's resonating. They're hearing it. Um and they're excited about it. And so when I speak to parents about it and and I'm like, you know, we're just looking for Yes, I'm in, right? Count me in. And it's not always just 150. It could be a thousand.

It could be 850, whatever. So, I'm excited about the fact that I'm not I'm not getting through to the investors, but I'm getting the investors that are their true customers. So, when I started this, I started as my own pain point. And now I am speaking to parents to whom it's a pain point as well and that they are like they want in. They want a piece of this action. So, that's what I'm excited about today. I'm excited and and and no matter how hard and challenging it is to build this business is that you know, I'm most excited to see one day our solution on the shelves of a pharmacy and seeing how, you know, we are kind of equalizing the, you know, the the the playing field in this diagnostic space that everybody can have the same kind of access. That's what I'm most excited about. Got it. So, what does success look like for AnywhereDx like over the next few years? I just need to see it in CVS. If I see a

26:30 Box in CVS, Okay. that will be success. And by the way, by the time I see that box in CVS, this company may not be mine, right? I am very much aware that this company that I'm building with my co-founder may not be mine, but if it's there, we got it there. That's great. What a good That's a That's a great sort of mission and like a a north star for you to have, for sure. Where can our listeners I mean, you've obviously got a website, you've got a a WeFunder web web page as well.

Any other Any other ways our our listeners can learn more about Anywhere Diagnostics? I mean, our website is good. WeFunder has a great video on there. They can follow me on LinkedIn. I post things all the time. But, you know, we we created a great video on WeFunder and it really gives you a very clear path and it gives you a clear understanding of what we're building, what it's going to look like, how it's going to be connected, and all the plant points that it's going to hit.

So, I really recommend that people see video and it's kind of sells itself. Like, you know, it doesn't take much to to to to kind of opt in. It's $150 to opt in. You would get first access to strep tests as soon as they're ready to go. Um so, that's where they can find me. Okay. Well, great. Well, Nathalya, I really appreciate your time today. It was wonderful being with you. You just bring such great energy and I'm sure our listeners will and viewers will will find a way to connect with you soon. So, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.