Cue Health is paving the way for the digital transformation of healthcare.
Founded in San Diego in 2010, Cue Health is the latest med-tech startup to become a publicly listed company after a sharp term to profitability this year. Having found success in developing a portable COVID-19 test kit that provides lab-quality results in just a few minutes, it now hopes to expand its influence beyond the pandemic and into every corner of healthcare.
On September 23, 2021, Cue Health announced the pricing of its initial public offering (IPO) of 12,500,000 shares of its common stock at a public offering price of US$16 per share, for gross proceeds of US$200 million.
This announcement came after a round of successes duly celebrated by the company. In October last year, Cue Health nabbed a whopping US$481 million from the United States Department of Defense under the Other Transaction Agreement to expand its production capacity of COVID test kits. In May this year, the company received another US$235 million from its investors, including Johnson & Johnson Innovation, ACME Capital and Koch Industries.
Portable COVID-test
The company is most known for their portable COVID-19 testing kit. It tests for signs of COVID using a nasal swab, which is then inserted into a single-use cartridge and analyzed by the battery-powered Cue Reader. The analyzer wirelessly transmits test results to a connected mobile phone within 20 minutes. Users can check and manage their test results on their electronic devices through real-time, actionable and connected data.
The system became the first molecular COVID diagnostic to receive emergency authorization from the United States Food and Drug Administration for at-home and over-the-counter use without physician supervision or a prescription. In October this year, it was selected by the National Basketball Association (NBA) as the league’s “Official Home and Point of Care Test” for the 2021-22 season.
Expansion of its portable health testsÂ
COVID testing is not the only thing that Cue Health does. It also administers other tests, including ones that involve women’s health and sexual health, as well as for both flu and respiratory syncytial virus. The latter tests will be brought to clinical testing by the end of this year.
On October 6, 2021, Cue Health announced its newest collaboration with Google Cloud to attend to the dire need within the U.S. to track and sequence respiratory viral variants. With the power of Google Cloud’s leading-edge artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics and privacy and security tools, Cue Health is aiming to reach more communities and have a greater impact in the fight against the current pandemic and any future ones.
Header image courtesy of Cue Health
