New website streamlines lab product searches

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Wedemeyer’s team added new features to the site based on feedback from early-access users within the CAP. A search query called “Dr. Livingstone” makes it possible to submit questions about instruments, biomarkers, or anything else of interest and have someone on the website team do the research to find an answer. There’s also a live chat and a message board where users can ask questions and connect with one another.

Jim Kathrein, a senior commercial advisor who previously worked for BioFire Diagnostics, provided input on an early version of the GreenarrowDx website. “It gives the customer a really good feel for a vendor’s capabilities,” he says of GreenarrowDx. “Customers still love to interact with their vendors, and this allows them to continue to connect.”

Kathrein says the site gives small vendors a chance to be noticed even if larger companies dominate the market because any company with a legitimate product can have it listed at no cost. “It allows both to get access and potential consideration for a sale,” he says. “It’s advantageous to both the large and the smaller companies.”

While GreenarrowDx was born out of the pandemic, it can be helpful well beyond it. “We spend so much time wandering through Google searches looking for ways to compare instruments,” says Maureen Basius, DO, chair of the pathology department at Hunterdon Hospital in New Jersey and an early-access user of the website. “This has really streamlined things and made it so serviceable. It’s comprehensive and thorough.”

Dr. Basius works at a community hospital and says smaller facilities like hers tend to “get lost in the shuffle” when vendors send out sales reps. “Even before COVID-19, our visits from vendors were few and far between,” she says. She believes the GreenarrowDx site will help her lab stay competitive with larger institutions by providing the kind of detailed information she previously had difficulty finding. Already she used the site to select a backup SARS-CoV-2 test to complement her lab’s initial offering in case of reagent or supply shortages.

When she originally heard about the idea from Wedemeyer, Dr. Basius recalls, “I thought, ‘That’s genius.’ And the place to run it is the CAP because that’s who the pathologists trust most.”

Meredith Salisbury is a writer in the New York City area.