What it doesn’t mention is the price: $249 for the reusable device and $195 for a pack of three tests.

Even as the number of covid cases waned during the winter, many people who saw the ads wondered whether the device — no matter how convenient or technologically wondrous it might be — has the right approach. High-tech startups eager to disrupt the health care industry are relying on a tried-and-true marketing strategy: price it high for early adopters and then lower the price as the market grows.

To take the Cue test, users swab their nostrils with a special wand, insert the wand into a cartridge, and then the cartridge into a white, cube-shaped reader. Within 20 minutes, results are transmitted via Bluetooth to Cue’s smartphone app. Those who purchase a $900 annual subscription can access a physician via the app, to certify the results as valid for travel or other purposes.

A highly accurate at-home covid test certainly has its advantages. And Cue, a publicly traded company based in San Diego, says that 97.8% of the time its test results agreed with a positive PCR lab test result, still considered among the most accurate. (The price of a PCR test varies but can be $100 or more, and results usually take at least 24 hours, though quicker results can be obtained for more money.)

But even the cheapest pricing — , which begin at $480 for 10 tests (and a discounted device for $149) — is considerably more than the cost of less-accurate antigen tests, which Americans can now often procure at no cost.

Cue’s price puts it out of the reach of most consumers. But it fits an elite business model that seeks to attract attention and assumes that the price will drop at some point as the market grows and demand rises.

For now, unless employers provide them, consumers must foot the bill for the Cue tests because health insurance companies, which generally cover lab-based PCR tests and rapid antigen tests, do not reimburse policyholders for the Cue system. “We are proactively working with health insurance companies to get coverage for Cue Health solutions,” said Dan Bank, a company spokesperson. But the company has yet to announce an arrangement with any insurer.

Although Cue’s Super Bowl commercial implies that its testing product is aimed for the at-home user, its biggest customer has been the Department of Defense, although its government contract has ended. The test has also been picked up by sports leagues and commercial enterprises buying units for their employees, including Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, Netflix, and Google.

In the first quarter of 2022, non-government revenue grew to 98% of sales, or $175.8 million out of a total of $179.4 million. Net income for the quarter was $2.8 million, compared with $13 million for the same quarter last year, as the company stepped up spending on personnel, marketing, and product development. Second-quarter revenue is also expected to drop, the company said, falling to about $50 million.

The company, which sold stock to the public last year, has seen its share price (enviable stock symbol HLTH) drop from $22 at its September debut to around $5.

The company’s other, even more basic, problem is that fewer people are interested in getting tested for covid regularly. “There was enthusiasm when covid was in full swing, but now that people sense the omicron strain is not so bad, the focus on testing has changed,” said Charles Rhyee, an analyst with Cowen. (Cowen, a Wall Street investment firm, helped take Cue public but does not have a financial relationship with the company.)

It’s possible, he said, that Cue is like other companies that zoomed during the pandemic only to fall to Earth. “The company is already looking like Peloton, and a lot of that feeling is already baked into the price of the stock,” Rhyee said.

Cue points out that covid testing is just the first use of its product. It wants to develop and receive FDA approval for other tests that can use the $249 device, including for flu; respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV; fertility; and pregnancy. If a flu test came back positive, Cue officials said, the smartphone app might be able to connect the patient to a physician early enough to receive the benefit from taking an anti-flu medication such as Tamiflu.

“Just like at-home pregnancy tests completely changed how women get answers and glucose meters forever changed how diabetics monitor their glucose levels, we think the paradigm has permanently shifted for infectious disease testing at home, and Cue is well positioned to meet these needs,” Bank said.

Yet none of those tests will be available or generate any income in 2022. The company expects to submit tests for influenza A and B in late summer or autumn. The company has pointed out that the speed at which it can evaluate new kinds of tests to offer the FDA could be adversely affected by the prevalence of covid, potentially limiting its ability to find test subjects or have personnel in its facilities.

To increase sales, the company in February lowered the cost of its monthly subscription and individual tests by $15.

But Charles Rhyee thinks much bigger price cuts are needed for success. The short-term solution, he said, is for Cue to offer its reader device at low or no cost and make its money from tests, using a classic marketing technique that predated the high-tech era by nearly a century: the razor-razor blade model, in which the real money is made on high-priced blades after selling customers a cheap proprietary handle to hold them.

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The latest version of the watch, which was announced last fall, detects a fibrillating heart and a propensity for falls. What other manufacturers learned from that is that you can make money if you can create a worry about a problem that people didn’t realize they had and also create a solution for that worry via a high-tech product. Many of the products at the mammoth annual show seemed to be following that strategy.

In A Rush To Brush?

Take, for instance, the problem of the length of time it takes to brush your teeth. With , you can cut down that onerous two-minute recommended time to 10 seconds, and supposedly still get your teeth cleaner.

Makers of the Y-shaped device say it brushes all your top and then bottom teeth in five seconds each, giving each tooth four times the brush exposure it would get with a typical two-minute tooth-by-tooth brushing regimen recommended for users of a conventional electric toothbrush.

The company says its device removes 15 percent more plaque than a traditional toothbrush. And, of course, you’ve freed up an additional 110 seconds in your life each time you brush.

The $125 Y-Brush handle and brush will be sold online this year; additional brush heads, which need to be replaced every six months, will cost $25.

Know Before You Gotta Go

Another problem: You can’t always predict when you need to go to the bathroom. , a sensor worn a half-inch above the pubis bone, predicts when an individual will have to urinate, giving the wearer a chance to gauge how long they can be away from a toilet.

The DFree monitors changes in bladder size and transmits that information to a smartphone app, which sends a customizable alert to the person when it’s time to find a toilet. The company says it doesn’t work for pregnant women or toilet-training toddlers.

The unit costs $500, or it can be rented for $40 per month, with the rental price applied to an eventual purchase.

Making Health A Cinch

Detecting falls, now a feature of the Apple Watch, is showing up in other devices. Like in this belt, which also can alert you to weight gain as it senses the belt getting tighter. (Yeah, like old-fashioned belts do.) The Welt smart belt, developed with seed money from Samsung, also monitors the time you spend sitting and the number of steps taken. Connected to a smartphone app (naturally), Welt suggests when a user should stand or change their eating habits and will also send a customized alert after a fall.

For Top-Condition Cognition 

There was no shortage at the show of devices to improve your mental abilities. , an app-based subscription series of audio music and vocal stimulations, provides visualization exercises that the company says will retrain your brain to allow you to relax, reduce stress and maximize your ability to lose weight.

The company charges $10 to $30 a month for the series, based on whether you need to address only one or more conditions.

As an added benefit, the company also sells an oddly priced $547 headset that beams blue light into your eyes. It uses light to stimulate your ears, following precepts of something called auriculotherapy, which employs light to activate, the company says, “the meridians known to directly affect the body’s organs and systems.”

EKGs On The Go

The electronics industry seems to believe it can make money convincing people they should be worried about their hearts. A number of products that take a simplified form of an electrocardiogram (EKG) are already on the market, the Apple Watch and Kardia among them. The WitCard, from touching two thumbs and one index finger, sends results to one’s health care provider where, using the company’s WitDisplayer portal, EKG readings over time can be compared and appropriate action taken when necessary.

The battery-operated WitCard is undergoing trials for European Union certification and approval by the Food and Drug Administration, and could cost about $120.

Monitoring Your Energy

Ever worry about whether you are burning carbs or fats? Well, now there’s a way. Breathe into the Lumen device each morning to get a reading of your carbon dioxide concentration. Based on that, a phone app determines how yesterday’s sleep, exercise and eating choices affected your ability to burn carbs or fats. Lumen also promises to tell you if you have sufficient energy stores before exercising (and what to do about it), why you feel tired all the time and how to alter your diet to lose weight.

The company expects to ship its $249 device this August.

Monitoring Your Sleep

Philips, the giant electronics company, has become the latest company to soothe our worries about not getting enough sleep. Its SmartSleep, a $400 headband worn in bed, emits audible tones that supposedly detect and boost slow-wave, or deep, sleep — a time when breathing and heart rate are at their slowest.

The intent of SmartSleep is to keep the wearer in the deep-sleep zone longer; it does not increase the amount of time one sleeps or help someone fall or stay asleep. And, if you are older, you are out of luck, as the device is recommended for people between 18 and 50. Philips says the slow-wave activity declines as we age and becomes more difficult to detect.

A High-Tech Pill Dispenser

Finally, an obvious problem: how to remember to take multiple drugs multiple times per day. And, of course, there is a just-as-obvious solution: automated drug-dispensing devices.

One of the latest products to attempt this is , which offers high-tech bells and whistles. The machine is loaded with hermetically sealed pill blister cards by a participating pharmacy. Once the card’s bar code confirms it’s the proper one and loaded into the machine, the patient is identified by facial recognition, an RFID bracelet or a PIN, and the proper pill pack, confirmed by the bar code on the packaging, is dispensed at the set time.

But wait, there is more. A camera records the dispensed pills and the patient’s removal of them. Missed doses are not dispensed.

The RxPense can be leased for $150 a month.

The device can’t tell whether the patient has actually ingested the pill. For that, pills will need to include a digestible sensor to track its trip through the body. The FDA approved Abilify MyCite, the first drug with a built-in tracking sensor, in 2017.

Don’t be surprised to see a device at next year’s show that can tell you where those tagged pills are.

Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at Â鶹ŮÓÅ—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about .

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This story can be republished for free (details).