Doctors couldn’t help. They turned to a shadow system of DIY medical tests.

Buoyed by regulatory vacuums, Silicon Valley is building a booming online wellness market that aims to leave the doctor’s office behind.

By Elizabeth Dwoskin, Daniel Gilbert and Tatum Hunter
June 9, 2024 at 6:02 a.m. EDT



Angelika Sharma at home in Livingston, N.J., with her 3-year-old daughter Annika. Sharma turned to a medical start-up to learn the cause of her daughter's food sensitivities. (Melanie Landsman for The Washington Post)

Angelika Sharma was desperate. An array of basic first foods — from bananas to sweet potatoes — caused her six-month old Annika to vomit uncontrollably, so many times in one night that she landed in the hospital for dehydration.

Half a dozen pediatric specialists largely dismissed her daughter’s ailments, Sharma said, forcing her to leave her job as a hospitality executive, because "you can’t just have any babysitter looking after a child” with such serious reactions to food.

After a year and a half, an answer came finally in the form of a Facebook ad for Tiny Health, a Silicon Valley start-up that could test her baby’s gut microbiome. Using a bead of stool swabbed from a diaper, the company diagnosed the problem: Annika’s gut was overcrowded with P. vulgatus, a common bacteria. A company nutritionist recommended a probiotic, sauerkraut and exposure to animal microbes through daily visits to the petting zoo. … Within months, Annika’s food reactions were normal. More tests showed a gut transformed.



Sharma has a meal with her daughter. (Melanie Landsman for The Washington Post)

A new world of DIY testing is changing the relationship between physicians and patients, allowing people like Sharma to bypass the doctors office and take medical tests on their own. Buoyed by a growing network of independent labs, Silicon Valley start-ups now offer tests for a battery of conditions including menopause, food sensitivity, thyroid function, testosterone levels, ADHD and sexually-transmitted diseases. The growth is fueled by a growing distrust of Big Medicine and confidence in home-testing borne from the Covid pandemic.

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