Cancer diagnostic company Pacific Edge has struck its first contract with a New Zealand health board to deliver its non-invasive bladder cancer tests.
While Pacific Edge has just gained regulatory approval in the United States to launch its Cxbladder testing programme, serviced from its new $4.5 million laboratory in Pennsylvania, the Palmerston North-based MidCentral District Health Board is now the first New Zealand health board to contract for the service, with another in negotiations.
Pacific Edge chief executive, David Darling, said use of Cxbladder by the health board could save it thousands of dollars per patient, with the existing invasive full-clinical tests for bladder cancer estimated to cost up to $2000, while the Cxbladder test costs $320.
''That's conservative savings, when you consider staff and theatres which are freed-up,'' he said, when contacted in San Francisco yesterday.
Starting next month, using tests from a small urine sample, 400 MidCentral patients will be evaluated over the next two years, to prioritise those at risk.
Minister of Health Tony Ryall has told health boards the time to deliver diagnostic test results was ''unacceptably long'', with some instances of patients waiting a year. He subsequently set a maximum test turnaround of six weeks.
Mr Darling said ''Pacific Edge, with its capability to process up to 35,000 Cxbladder tests a year through our Dunedin laboratory, is confident it can assist health boards to exceed the minister's target by a comfortable margin''.
Cxbladder has a commitment to deliver test results to clinicians and patients within five working days, Mr Darling said.
The 400-patient MidCentral programme would prioritise patients, and establish the level of savings, Mr Darling said.
''We don't have to use the old test [methods] of 100% of people to find the [cancer-affected] 5%,'' he said. He highlighted results which showed Cxbladder ''outperformed all other benchmark technologies and identified nearly all tumours of interest to clinicians'', he said.
