Preventive health company Nightingale Health has introduced a remote blood collection kit for its medical research and clinical trial customers.

This comes after the company acquired the worldwide licence and rights to the Velvet self-collection device in January this year.

The Nightingale kit and self-collection device enable trial participants to draw their own blood sample from a finger-prick.

This approach provides substantial flexibility and enables study designs that were previously restricted by geographical and logistical limitations.

Given that Nightingale Health offers both sample collection and sample analysis, it becomes possible for remote blood collection to be incorporated into studies in a seamless and cost-efficient manner.

Nightingale Health stated that its kit is available immediately for remote blood collection for medical research and clinical trials.

The biomarkers evaluated for research purposes from the dry blood sample taken with the Nightingale Kit cover a slate of biological functions.

These biological functions include insulin sensitivity (amino acids); lipids (e.g., LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, ApoA1 and ApoB); dietary intake (e.g., omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids); kidney function (e.g., creatinine); chronic inflammation (GlycA) and fluid balance (e.g., albumin).

Nightingale Health has customers in more than 25 countries, operating globally with a parent company based in Finland and seven subsidiaries in countries, including Japan, the US and the UK.

Its technology is used by the healthcare and medical research sectors and several health initiatives, such as the UK Biobank.

In June this year, Nightingale and Finnish health service company Suomen Terveystalo signed a letter of intent to expand their strategic partnership, originally signed in April 2021.

The expansion of this collaboration increased the blood sample analysis volumes ordered by Terveystalo.