Reperio Health, a provider of at-home health screenings with instant results, is teaming up with Amazon One Medical to expand access to primary care.
This marks Amazon's first partnership in the at-home preventive screening space.
Reperio was founded in 2020, working with employers to offer at-home health screenings with instant results. Now, it is launching ReperioCare, which adds an on-demand virtual visit with a contracted clinician to interpret those results. Employees using the service can then take advantage of an included One Medical membership for ongoing primary care.
The partnership's goal is to streamline the path from early detection to ongoing primary care, particularly in rural areas.
“What we’re ultimately trying to do … is getting data into people’s hands wherever they live,” Travis Rush, co-founder and CEO of Reperio, told Fierce Healthcare in an advance interview.
The process of a Reperio at-home screening kit, including a consult, takes between 30 minutes and an hour. Reperio leverages existing FDA-cleared devices, not its own. Instead of consumers having to buy each device, Reperio loans them out. This makes them cheaper, according to Rush. They get shipped to a consumer’s home, and, after they are done being used, they get picked up, sterilized and reused.
What is unique is Reperio’s platform, which manages multiple devices from different manufacturers and their results all in one place. The Bluetooth-connected kit measures blood pressure, heart rate, body mass index, relative fat mass, blood glucose and a complete lipid panel. Results are immediately available in Reperio’s mobile app. The virtual visit will be billed as a claim or available via direct invoice. Reperio works with Aetna, with more payers expected to roll out.
“Whatever we can assess from that data, combined with their medical history … there’s all kinds of things that can come up,” Rush noted.
Reperio has more than 50 clients today, primarily employers. The point of the Amazon One Medical partnership is to have a more comprehensive extension of primary care, in case Reperio finds a health concern. “If we find something, that’s what that handoff is all about,” Rush said.
The approach isn't meant to replace existing providers. Members are not required to use One Medical.
“We have no intention of intruding on a patient-doctor relationship. We’re not here to interfere with the way people are doing things today if they’re happy with that process,” Rush said. The goal is to close care gaps in rural areas, since Reperio can reach any person anywhere in the U.S. with UPS.
“Being a customer-centric company requires meeting people where they are," William Kimbrough, M.D., senior medical director of clinical services at Amazon One Medical, said in the announcement. "Through this partnership with Reperio Health, individuals who complete at-home preventative screenings can seamlessly transition into One Medical’s comprehensive primary care𑁋ensuring they have access to a care provider proven to deliver the highest levels of health, care, and value.”
Rush recalled a story of the many hoops his brother-in-law in rural Oregon went through just to get his annual wellness check. The closest lab test available was 80 miles away. He showed up, did the intake questionnaire, then a computer was wheeled into the exam room where he had a virtual consultation with a doctor.
“He called me raging and ranting saying, ‘You’ve got to get this everywhere—this is crazy, I just blew a whole day doing this!’”
Rush envisions a future where if an American wanted to do a preventive visit from their home, no matter where they are, they could have a kit to their door in an hour. They could do their screening, interpret their results with a provider remotely and get their prescriptions straight to their door.
Reperio says it has achieved between 4x and 8x cost savings for clients, as measured by the ability to detect a health concern in members. About half of the people Reperio screens find something underlying they did not previously know about. Clients have seen increased screening participation rates by more than 200% and achieved a 95% satisfaction rate.