The development, validation and application of remote blood sample collection in telehealth programmes

Albert Koulman, Kirsten L Rennie, Damon Parkington, Nicholas J Wareham

10 May 2022


The ability to collect a blood sample painlessly from people at home without the need of a healthcare worker visit could transform the way healthcare and health research are conducted. We demonstrated that a new device (OneDraw) could be successfully used by people in their own homes to collect a dried blood spot sample and be posted back using the normal postage system to the laboratory.

After demonstrating the method worked, it was used in the Fenland COVID-19 study where 10,647 samples were collected every 3-months in over 3,000 participants to measure whether COVID-19 antibodies were present in the blood. This was used to calculate the proportion of participants who had a past COVID-19 infection, with or without symptoms. A high proportion of participants were able to collect their own blood samples (89-93% at each timepoint) and almost all samples received were successfully processed (99.9%).

The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly increased the adoption of “telehealth” where people communicate online and via the telephone with their healthcare teams and in health research. However, the gap has been how to collect blood samples remotely. During the early phases of the pandemic when home visits were not possible, the only feasible option was for people to take their own blood sample. This usually involves pricking a finger with a lancet and dropping blood onto special paper or into a blood tube. However, many people find this painful and the sample cannot always be reliably used for analysis due to contamination or insufficient blood sample.

This study showed that dried blood spot samples from the OneDraw device produced comparable results for assessing COVID-19 antibodies as standard blood samples taken by a needle in the arm by a trained healthcare worker. Participants also preferred the OneDraw device to the other methods and reported lower pain scores. Due to its ease of use and acceptability, the OneDraw device will be particularly useful for future telehealth applications, for example where people cannot travel to a clinical centre and repeat blood samples may be needed.

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