Home Testing, Does It Work

[Sparklingsunshine]

I found an an article in the Guardian today about the rise of home medical tests, which I thought might be of interest to forum members, seeing as its something many of us do. theguardian.com/society/art...

[HandS]

The last paragraph sums it up!

Good article.

To think how recently patients’ records have been made accessible to them, and STILL not available routinely to very many, says everything about NHS attitude of they know best and patients cannot ask questions, nor trusted to know what’s best for them.

However, there is an explosion of commercial exploitation of tests touted in displays at pharmacy tills with very poor balance of information.

Thanks for posting

[humanbean]

I followed the link from the article to the company called Newfoundland.

Some of the tests are poor e.g. the thyroid test measures only TSH. The iron deficiency test measures only ferritin. But I did like the vitamin D test for only £7.99. So many test packages I've seen miss out Vitamin D.

[helvella in reply to humanbean]

Does it give a numeric result? Or just an adequate/inadequate result?

Their home TSH test only identified under or over 5. Which makes it a danger!

[humanbean in reply to helvella]

I didn't go into that much detail in my investigation - I mainly looked at price!

Whoops!

[humanbean in reply to humanbean]

I've just checked. I probably wouldn't use any of the tests, after all.

[Sparklingsunshine in reply to humanbean]

You can buy some of these sorts of tests from Amazon but when you look a bit deeper they are simply yes/ no tests, rather like pee and see pregnancy tests. So pretty useless really. Their only saving graces are they are instant and cheap.