The Tomorrow's health vision

Tomorrow’s Health Provides Cutting Edge Laboratory Testing Capabilities

Tomorrow’s Health was started in 2020 to fill the critical need for rapid and accurate COVID-19 PCR testing in the Tri-Cities area. Even during our busiest times, results have always been turned around within the same day or the next day.

Since then, we have expanded our menu to include many of the standard blood tests available. We offer a variety of panels including those that evaluate general health, men’s health, women’s health, cardiovascular health, thyroid function, diabetes, anemia, and more! We offer all of our tests as direct-to-consumer – you can order your own test, you do not need to get a doctor’s order!

Tomorrow’s Health is working on developing a next generation sequencing (NGS) menu of tests as well. We are currently able to sequence the SARS-CoV-2 genome to detect variants, and we are working on a respiratory pathogen panel that can detect hundreds of potential pathogens while evaluating over a thousand antibiotic resistance markers.

Catalyzing a revolution in healthcare!

Decentralizing Laboratory Medicine. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2019-2022 laid bare some of the shortcomings of our current healthcare system, including the rapid development and mobilization of quality laboratory testing for new and emerging infectious diseases. We need to support the creation of local laboratories that are more flexible and capable of providing testing needs tailored to the individuals and entities in each community. Tomorrow’s Health Laboratory is that laboratory for the Tri-Cities (Washington) area.
 
Increasing the Value of Healthcare. Billing through insurance has become extremely time-consuming and costly to the patient/customer. The U.S. spends more (17% of GDP) on healthcare than any other country, yet demonstrates significantly lower healthcare metric scores than any other country, particularly in administrative efficiency. To help reduce the costs of healthcare and provide quality lab testing services, Tomorrow’s Health has adopted an up-front cash pay model that is both reasonable and transparent.

Getting the Patient Involved. In the past two decades, most states in the U.S. have passed laws that allow patients to order their own lab tests, without doctor’s orders. This has come to be known as direct-to-consumer (DTC) lab testing. DTC testing saves patients money (avoiding unnecessary doctor’s visits), time (waiting for medical appointments and doctor’s orders), and hassle (DTC lab test results come directly to the patient). More importantly, however, DTC testing encourages patients to become much more involved in their own healthcare. Tomorrow’s Health offers DTC testing options, with test panels to detect or monitor diabetes, anemia, thyroid function, cardiovascular health, hormone levels, or general women’s and men’s health.

Focusing on Prevention. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. die of preventable diseases. Three of the top five causes, heart disease, cancer, and stroke, may be predicted and subsequently prevented by analysis of a person’s genetic makeup through whole genome sequencing (WGS), and implementation of a variety of affordable prevention efforts, including eating a balanced diet, exercising, avoiding harmful substances (such as tobacco, illicit drugs and excessive amounts of alcohol), getting enough rest, and screening via laboratory tests, for serious, chronic diseases (e.g., diabetes, heart disease, and cancer). Tomorrow’s Health is developing a personalized preventive approach that will allow their patients/customers to approach their health and their lives with their eyes wide open.
 

Personalized, preventive medicine is the healthcare of the future. But this will require a healthcare revolution!

Where it all started

The Vision. In early 2008, I attended a 1-day conference held by the Drug Information Association (DIA) in Bethesda, MD. I was a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, working on malaria vaccine and drug development at the Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC) and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR). One topic presented at the conference was the use of human genetic information to help medical professionals make drug treatment choices. It was at this point that the vision came to my mind. I imagined a patient going into their clinic, where the clinic not only possessed the patient’s medical history, but also his/her entire genome sequence. Medical providers would then be enabled to use each patient’s genome sequence to “personalize” his/her medical care. I thought that as new research became available, it could immediately be applied to each patient’s known genome sequence. This would allow continuous real-time updates of each patient’s “personalized” medical record.

A Start. In 2013, we began developing the beginnings of our business. We established a name, Tomorrow’s Health, which describes the preventive focus we believe medicine should have in our healthcare. We established a logo, symbolizing the vast potential understanding our DNA has in preventive and precision medicine. And we developed a business plan, centered on the exciting possibilities unlocking our individual genetics will have on human health.

Opening our Doors. In November 2020 in response to the unprecedented effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, we opened a clinical laboratory in the Tri-Cities, WA area. We were very excited to bring RT-PCR technology to the local area, providing advanced diagnostic lab testing combined with superior result turnaround times (all of the more than 26,000 tests we performed were completed same-day or next-day), greatly aiding the local healthcare providers to provide life-saving care to the members of our community. In July 2021, we brought in a wide variety of general laboratory tests (e.g., complete blood count (CBC), comprehensive metabolic panel (CMP), thyroid function, anemia and diabetes testing), offering them as direct-to-consumer (DTC). Allowing patients to order their own laboratory tests was a conscious effort to get patients more involved in their own health and to focus on prevention.

The Way Forward. Personalized, preventive medicine is the health care of the future. The industry of human genetics consulting, particularly focused on disease prevention, is gaining steam. Genetic testing has been available for many years, with more and more becoming known about the human genome. Basic laboratory research studies combined with human clinical trials are helping to show the functions of many human genes and the role(s) each plays in human disease. As this work continues, medicine will become increasingly personalized. However, individual clinicians, clinics and hospitals will not be able to keep up with the ever-accelerating research data being generated and will require a current, comprehensive source of data compilations along with accurate and actionable interpretations of the inevitably large and diverse compilations. TOMORROW’S HEALTH is poised to provide this comprehensive service, including genome interpretation, and personalized, preventive health planning and management.