Home diagnostic tests could cut wait times and close gaps in Canada’s healthcare system

With DIY screening tools, patients can identify issues and access treatment sooner — leading to better outcomes.

Canada’s healthcare system is dealing with a bottleneck of historic proportions. More than one in five Canadians don’t have a family doctor. And those that do face long wait lists for tests, referrals and specialist care.

Those delays can be the difference between life and death — literally. Nearly half of lung cancers are found at stage IV, when survival rates plummet, and many colorectal cancers aren’t caught until patients land in the ER. The Canadian Cancer Society estimates cancer costs the system more than $30 billion a year, with patients and caregivers shouldering an additional $7.5 billion in travel, childcare, lost income and other expenses. Proactive intervention can dramatically improve prognoses for a number of conditions. In the case of chronic kidney disease, which affects more than 11 percent of the world’s population, the Global Patient Alliance for Kidney Health estimates that early detection could save as many as 15 million lives worldwide in the coming decades.

That’s where at-home tools come in. DIY screening options have the potential to catch diseases earlier on, which makes treating them more effective (and less costly). Heightened awareness around the importance of early detection has made cancer a proving ground for this technology; for instance, at-home fecal immunochemical tests for colorectal screening have become standard nationwide.

Researchers are now exploring ways to apply that approach to a broad range of disorders. (It doesn’t hurt that peak COVID protocols made us all more comfortable with self-swabbing.) Waterloo’s HeadFirst is developing saliva-based kits to detect concussions on the sidelines, Pickering’s BTNX is already selling menopause urine tests on its website and Edmonton’s NiaHealth is building a biomarker tool that would flag hormonal and metabolic shifts related to inflammation, fertility and general health.

These efforts hint at a future where a tiny drop of blood, saliva or urine offers the potential for individuals to screen for everything from prostate cancer to neurological injuries, saving the system billions — and improving the outcomes for patients living with serious conditions.

Measuring muscle mass

In 2018, Rafaela Andrade’s aunt died from injuries sustained in a fall — the result of undiagnosed muscular degeneration. Although her aunt showed no outward signs of weakness, her muscle condition had deteriorated to a dangerous point.

Three years later, fresh from post-doctoral studies in biochemistry and molecular biology at Dalhousie University, Andrade founded Myomar Molecular, a Hailifax-based startup with the ambitious goal of making muscle health as easy to track as blood pressure.

“Muscle is our longevity organ,” says Andrade. It’s about more than strength — muscle supports brain function, protects other organs and plays a role in long-term disease risk. The problem is that monitoring its deterioration typically requires CT or MRI scans, which are expensive, specialist-dependent and hard to access. In Ontario, low-priority patients wait roughly three months for imaging (in Toronto, the delays are even longer).

Myomar’s technology assesses the levels of five biomarkers, amino acids and other compounds that help maintain muscle health. The company already offers at-home tests that get analyzed in a lab, but is developing a rapid version that works like a pregnancy test. Users pee on a stick, watch the colour change and scan the strip with Myomar’s software, which analyzes how well the body is building new protein, how efficiently mitochondria are fuelling muscle function and how quickly tissue is breaking down under stress.

The first rollout will target athletes, for whom even small changes in muscle performance matter. But Andrade sees greater potential in groups that aren’t usually monitored, such as people in perimenopause, who experience muscle decline linked to dropping estrogen levels, and patients on GLP-1 drugs, who often lose muscle mass alongside fat.

Muscle loss leads to complications as you age, including an increased risk of dementia. Andrade’s hope is to help mitigate those risks by catching warning signs early on and providing users with personalized nutritional guidance and access to experts in muscle science. With Health Canada approval secured, Myomar plans to launch its rapid tests in Canada and the U.S. within the year.

Detecting cervical cancer

After CT Murphy endured an especially painful Pap test during her undergraduate studies at the University of Waterloo, the nanotechnology engineering student had an idea. Instead of relying on an uncomfortable exam with a speculum — a tool that can be traced back to ancient Rome, the “modern” version of which was tested on enslaved women — could cervical cells be extracted from menstrual blood?

That idea became Cellect, which Murphy co-founded in 2023 with fellow Waterloo student Ibukun Elebute. “Menstrual blood is a thing that we’re taught to collect and dispose of,” says Elebute. “But that means there’s a wealth of health information that we just throw away every month.” Cellect is developing menstrual pads enhanced with nanomaterials that can preserve cervical cells, viral DNA and other biomarkers. Users would then mail the pad in for analysis, offering a less invasive way to screen for cervical cancer.

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women globally. In Canada, an estimated 1,600 were diagnosed last year, and 400 died from it. Survival rates soar when the disease is caught early, but existing tools leave gaps. Only a third of Canadian women report ever having had an HPV test, which detects high-risk strains of the virus that causes nearly all cervical cancers. Barriers include access to family doctors, the flexibility to attend appointments and discomfort with certain exams.

Canada is already moving toward more accessible screening. Last year, British Columbia launched the country’s first at-home HPV self-sampling program. More than 130,000 kits were requested in the first year, nearly one in five by first-time screeners. Alberta started a similar pilot in late 2024, and Prince Edward Island plans to begin a phased rollout next year. Ontario, meanwhile, has switched to HPV testing as its primary method, but for now, the test still requires an in-clinic appointment.

Cellect is aiming to close the gap by adding diagnostics into a product many are already familiar with. The company hopes to have a functional prototype by early 2026 — which, if successful, could become key to Canada’s goal of eliminating cervical cancer by 2040.

Keeping track of kidney health

Nearly 10 percent of Canadians have been diagnosed with diabetes, a condition that, left unmanaged, can result in serious complications, including heart issues, blindness and nerve damage. Diabetes is also the leading cause of kidney failure, the symptoms of which often don’t appear until permanent damage has already set in. Although a simple urine analysis can flag early signs of kidney disease, only 17 percent of Canadians with diabetes test with the recommended frequency. It’s partly a logistical problem: Patients have to pick up a kit from their doctor’s office, fill it at home, then cart a container of warm urine back to the receptionist’s desk. For many, that’s reason enough to avoid the issue entirely.

Healthy.io, a startup based in London, U.K., is working to remove those hurdles. The company’s kit arrives by mail with a recyclable cup, a dipstick and a colour board to calibrate your phone’s camera. The process takes minutes and results are as reliable as lab tests. According to general manager Damian O’Boyle, skeptics doubted that patients could manage the tech. “A lot of the early pushback I’d get from testing sites was, ‘Oh, that’s all very well and good, but my aunt Maude won’t do that with her phone,’” he says.

Aunt Maude, it turns out, did. The company has maintained an average completion rate of 57 percent over the past five years. Users are guided by an in-app avatar that uses images and prompts that are simple enough to be understood by someone reading at a Grade 3 level. The oldest known user to complete the test was 104.

The success of this application prompted O’Boyle and his colleagues to explore additional ways that Healthy.io’s camera tech could improve health outcomes for underserved populations. “We decided to move from the glamour of urine into the glory of wounds,” he says. Like kidney failure, wounds are a complication of diabetes; because of nerve damage, patients may not realize that a benign scrape has become infected until it’s too late. They cost the Canadian system more than $12 billion in 2023. Healthcare providers typically assess wounds with a tape measure, an imprecise method that can vary greatly. Healthy.io has developed a more accurate means of analysis: users upload a short video that the company’s app uses to build a 3D wound model, which allows for more consistent tracking.

The stakes are especially high in rural and Indigenous communities, where kidney failure rates are up to four times higher than the Canadian average, and diabetes-related amputations can be up to 22 times more common than in urban settings. Researchers estimate 85 percent of those amputations are preventable with proper screening. Tools like Healthy.io won’t solve the access gap on their own, but they could give more patients the chance to catch problems before it’s too late.

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Photo courtesy of Cellect