During the pandemic, the Berlin startup Probatix became one of the most sought-after software providers for test centers. Now the founders are daring to make a fresh start – with blood tests.
The corona pandemic has left its mark in almost all areas of life: new companies have emerged, others had to give up; Working from home has become normal, the digitization of many processes has accelerated enormously. And: Health has gone from being a marginal issue to the temporary focus of social debate.
Some start-ups were also able to benefit from this – for example the software company Venture Leap from Berlin. Originally launched in 2019 as a classic SaaS provider, the founders Daniel Werner and Philipp Noack were in the right place at the right time after the outbreak of the pandemic: They developed the Probatix platform based on their software, via which the previously mostly analog process of corona tests was carried out for the first time handled digitally could be: Relevant information about the users was no longer transmitted via error-prone paper documents, but digitally from the test center to the laboratory.
With the introduction of citizen tests in Germany in March 2021, demand exploded from one day to the next. “It was a crazy time. Back then, we were still a mini-company with twelve or thirteen employees,” remembers Daniel Werner, who studied computer science and mathematics. According to him, 30 million tests were carried out on the platform within two years. But despite the rapid rise, one thing is clear: the business model is limited in time.
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Probatix app: Like a digital patient file
So the founders come up with a new plan. You want to transfer the concept of low-threshold diagnostics, on which the corona tests are based, to other medical areas. “During the pandemic, for the first time, people were able to go outside medical environment take advantage of such a service,” says Werner in an interview with Gründerszene. “This is a completely new idea that could also work well in other contexts.”
In a first step, Probatix focuses on blood tests, which are carried out in pharmacies or doctor’s offices at the patient’s request and then evaluated in the laboratory. The startup’s software forms the interface between all parties involved: The pharmacies can use the platform to access the necessary material and know-how for the health tests and, after the test, send the sample to one of the three Probatix partner laboratories. The blood test is evaluated there and the result is transmitted digitally to the customer.
In particular, communication with and within laboratories has so far mostly been analog, explains Werner, which is why the digitalization these processes have particularly great potential there. But the health portal also offers advantages for customers: the results are available much more quickly and are processed in a similar way to a digital patient file. This means that the data is always available and can be compared over time, for example.
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Blood tests cost between 30 and 120 euros
If there are deviations from the standard values, these would of course continue to be discussed with a doctor, emphasizes the founder. According to Werner, the range of tests covers the entire range of values that can be checked using capillary blood, including iron or vitamin D supply, for example. “For many diseases, the blood test shows values outside the reference range early on,” he explains. That is why the tests are primarily suitable for prevention, but also for monitoring chronic diseases.
For the customer, the tests cost between 30 and 120 euros, depending on the scope; they are not covered by health insurance. The pharmacies pay a commission to Probatix for each test, from which the laboratory and the logistics still have to be paid. “The goal is, of course, to bring our offer into standard care,” says Werner. “Only then can one speak of low-threshold diagnostics across the board.”
Werner and his co-founder financed the development of Probatix exclusively from their own income, especially from the pandemic period. There are no investors. “We have grown so solidly that we have a runway of a few months to position ourselves strategically.” According to the founder, around two dozen pharmacies in several German cities have introduced the offer since the new service was activated at the end of April . By the end of the year there should be more than 1000.
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Data protection “does collateral damage”
According to Werner, the demand for it is constantly increasing: On the one hand, there is greater health awareness and many technical developments that promote the trend. On the other hand, openness to digital topics has slowly increased in recent years. “Data protection is rightly given a high priority in Germany. Unfortunately, in doing so, we often took away the space for innovations.”
If more data is available, people can be helped better and faster. In case of doubt, this saves lives, says the Probatix founder. It is therefore necessary to weigh up how data protection is to be implemented in detail. Added to this is the increasing shortage of doctors, especially in rural areas, which low-threshold medical offers could at least cushion a little.
Others have also recognized this potential: Das highly rated Startup Aware for example, which wants to set up its own laboratories for blood tests. “There’s a lot of movement in the diagnostics market right now,” says Werner. However, he sees his company at an advantage over the competition because it uses the existing infrastructure of the pharmacy and can thus grow faster and more cost-effectively. The founders see this model and its early market launch as a unique selling point.