A group of film industry medics has evolved from providing aid on local film sets to bringing clinical lab testing to the public.
Heather Drake Bianchi, CEO of Cinemedics and Drakos Clinical Laboratories, said they were quickly called to process large amounts of COVID tests after a film they were working on, Plan B, was shut down due to the pandemic.
“You know we tested like 130 people in two hours, which compared to what we do now is almost laughable, but for us it was a big celebration because we figured out how to do it—people weren't doing that back then,” Bianchi said.
The rapid testing allowed filming to resume at American High, a Liverpool-based production company, and get people back to work. Then Bianchi said she and her team realized the already-strained local healthcare system needed another option for clinical lab testing. She said breakthroughs in science and technological processes helped their team’s mission to help.
“In this case of laboratory testing, it’s given us the ability to perform real time testing in a significantly increased diversity of care settings so that it’s in the home, in the work place, patients centered medical homes,” Bianchi said.
She said sound clinical evidence with real-time data from patient-centered labs helps their outcomes.
“I would love to be able to support the veteran community, the LGBTQ community, parents with multiple kids who just can’t get to the doctor and they just need someone to come to them, cancer patients who really need to stay out of the hospital, our elderly population who would like to enjoy aging in place, that’s my goal," she said.
Cinemedics has a lab at Northeast Medical Center in Fayetteville and can schedule onsite appointment for their mobile lab.