Home >> COVID-19 >> New website streamlines lab product searches

New website streamlines lab product searches

image_pdfCreate PDF

Meredith Salisbury

January 2021—When COVID-19 struck and much of the U.S. went into lockdown, Russ Wedemeyer spotted a problem: Pathologists and laboratories lost access to sales reps and sales reps access to them. These connections were casualties of the pandemic, and Wedemeyer saw an opportunity.

A veteran of the clinical diagnostics industry, Wedemeyer leads a consulting team designed to help small companies with sales and marketing resources. When COVID-19 hit, he pulled together a roundtable about how lockdowns were affecting clinical labs and vendors alike. The feedback was clear: This went far beyond an inconvenience. Clinical lab teams were struggling to keep up, particularly as SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics flooded the market.

“With COVID-19, I couldn’t see in a million years how people were going to get in and do a sales call now,” Wedemeyer says.

Wedemeyer

CAP TODAY publisher Bob McGonnagle, too, saw the problem. The cancellation of live meetings compounded the difficulties. His discussions with Wedemeyer fostered a collaboration. They conceived of a new channel that would allow clinical labs and vendors to connect.

Within months, Wedemeyer and his team designed GreenarrowDx, a new website on which vendors can list their offerings for free and pathologists and others in labs can find useful content quickly. Wedemeyer’s group worked with CAP TODAY and its readers to ensure the website met mutual needs.

The website (greenarrowdx.com) serves as a directory on steroids, listing instruments and reagents across categories: surgical pathology, clinical chemistry, microbiology, LIS/billing, blood bank, hematology, automation systems, and point of care. There’s also a complete list of COVID-19 diagnostics that have received FDA emergency use authorization. Users can search by product type or vendor name and view information about assay metrics, instrument size and throughput, CLIA status, and more. Checkboxes allow users to select items of interest, compare them, and export them to a PDF file. Contact information for each vendor is available. Pricing data are not, because price often depends on many factors and must be tailored to each laboratory.

“The number one problem everybody has is searching for products,” Wedemeyer says, judging from the feedback he gathered at the project’s outset. “How do they find new diagnostics? Google search results are very messy and won’t be a curated list of the diagnostic tools, microscopes, or scanners that people are looking for.”

CAP TODAY
X