Diagnostics Your Way is building infrastructure for the patients traditional healthcare systems often miss
For decades, diagnostics in healthcare have largely depended on one assumption: patients will come to the system. But for many populations, particularly those navigating stigmatized conditions like HIV, viral hepatitis, or sexually transmitted infections, that assumption breaks down quickly.
Travel time, cost, lost wages, limited health literacy, and social stigma can all become barriers to care long before a test is ever administered. Increasingly, that gap is becoming both a public health challenge and a market opportunity.
Philadelphia-based Diagnostics Your Way, led by CEO Nick Malhomme, believes the next evolution of diagnostics infrastructure will not be built around physical testing locations, but around virtual, patient-centered care models designed to meet people where they are.
“We’re trying to solve the problem of stigmatized infections,” Malhomme explained in a recent interview, pointing to HIV, viral hepatitis, vaginosis, and cervical screening as examples of conditions where patients often avoid or delay care because of the social and logistical burden attached to seeking treatment.
The Hidden Infrastructure Problem in Diagnostics
The company’s thesis reflects a broader shift happening across healthcare and life sciences: diagnostics is no longer just about the test itself. Increasingly, the competitive advantage lies in access, engagement, and continuity of care.
“There are physical testing locations. And sometimes people are traveling two or three hours each way to get a routine test,” Malhomme said.
While direct-to-consumer testing companies have grown rapidly over the last several years, Diagnostics Your Way identified what it viewed as a major gap in the market: few companies were building comprehensive, end-to-end diagnostics platforms designed specifically for health systems, insurers, public health agencies, and academic institutions.
“We also saw that there are direct consumer providers that are selling these tests, but there was nobody working B2B with health systems, health insurers, public health, academic institutions,” Malhomme explained.
That distinction matters. The company is not simply selling at-home testing kits. Its broader model aims to integrate diagnostics, personalized testing, care coordination, medication adherence, and follow-up support into one connected ecosystem.
The company says it has also filed a patent related to a “sexual health passport,” designed to help individuals securely manage and share testing verification.
The larger signal here is not just digital diagnostics adoption. It is the continued decentralization of healthcare delivery itself.
Why This Matters Now
The timing may be especially important. Healthcare systems across the United States continue facing pressure around staffing shortages, rising operational costs, uneven access to care, and growing demand for more consumer-friendly healthcare experiences. At the same time, public health agencies are increasingly being asked to reach vulnerable populations with fewer resources.
Diagnostics Your Way is positioning itself at the intersection of several converging trends:
- virtual care adoption
- consumer-directed healthcare
- public health modernization
- decentralized diagnostics
- and data-driven patient engagement
In many ways, the company’s model reflects how healthcare infrastructure is evolving beyond hospitals and clinics toward distributed, digitally enabled care networks. The populations most affected by these barriers are often those least equipped to navigate traditional healthcare systems. “Travel costs, travel time, taking time off work is more difficult. Health literacy is lower,” Malhomme noted.
That creates both a healthcare access issue and an economic one.
As diagnostics become more embedded into preventive care, population health management, and chronic disease monitoring, companies capable of simplifying access and improving adherence could become increasingly valuable partners to both public and private healthcare systems.
Building From Philadelphia
Although Diagnostics Your Way operates nationally, the company sees Philadelphia as a strategic base for growth. Malhomme cited the region’s geographic positioning between New York, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., along with proximity to collaborators and public health partners, as a key advantage.
“We work with New York City Department of Public Health. We work with Johns Hopkins,” Malhomme said, adding that the Northeast corridor provides strong connectivity to major healthcare and government stakeholders.
The company currently works with organizations including the New York City Department of Public Health and Delaware County, while continuing to expand its client base and partnership footprint. That positioning also reflects a larger trend emerging across Greater Philadelphia and the broader Northeast life sciences corridor: healthcare innovation is increasingly being shaped not just by therapeutics and drug development, but by infrastructure companies focused on access, delivery models, patient engagement, and digital enablement.
The Next 18 Months
Like many early-stage healthcare startups, Diagnostics Your Way now faces the difficult transition from validation to scale. Over the next 12 to 18 months, the company says its primary priorities include raising additional capital, expanding contracts, and building long-term sustainability.
“We’re trying to fundraise and raise a couple of million,” Malhomme said. “To really sit down at 18 months and say, we’ve got the funding in. We’ve got the contracts. We’re sustainable. And we have everything in place to grow.”
That journey is rarely linear. Malhomme acknowledged familiar startup pressures including long enterprise sales cycles, cash flow management, and supplier reliability challenges. But the company’s larger opportunity may extend beyond diagnostics alone. As healthcare systems continue shifting toward decentralized care models, the companies that reduce friction. especially for underserved and stigmatized populations, may help define what modern healthcare infrastructure looks like over the next decade.
For Diagnostics Your Way, the real signal is not simply that testing can happen remotely. It is that access itself is becoming one of the most important innovations in healthcare.
