The European Medical Center launched an independent diagnostics service Lab360, opening the first test collection point

After acquiring the distributor of laboratory equipment and consumables Astra-77 in 2022, the European Medical Center (EMC) decided to develop this area. The company launched the independent diagnostics service Lab360, opening the first sample collection point. It will not be easy for EMC to compete with large laboratory chains when operating in a higher price segment, experts warn.

The EMC structure “EMS-Holdco” became the owner of 80% in the Lab360 company, registered on December 4, 2023, Kommersant discovered in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. The remaining 20% ​​belongs to Alina Zholobova. Lab360 was headed by the general director of the supplier of equipment and reagents for Astra-77 laboratories, Veniamin Dergunov. In the second quarter of 2022, EMC bought 77% of Astra-77, which, as follows from SPARK, registered the domain lab360.ru back in February, and in March filed an application for the Lab360 trademark.

The Lab360 website invites users to select tests to take at the point in Moscow where the EMC perinatal center is located. The company confirmed to Kommersant that this treatment room is a pilot location for testing the entire service.

Eqiva consultant Maria Kolomentseva estimates investments in opening a collection point at 4–15 million rubles. depending on the level of equipment and repair. Lab360 was registered to develop EMC’s existing laboratory business, the network explained. EMC plans to use the capacity, technology and consumables provided by Astra-77 and its partners.

EMC is not the first chain of private clinics to open testing sites. Since the end of 2021, Medsi has been developing its own laboratory network, SmartLab, and in April 2022, it acquired the Perm network of clinics and test collection points Labdiagnostics. Medsi did not comment on the current scale of its laboratory network.

Since 2021, the network of Mother and Child clinics also began opening its own test collection points, but by July 2023 it closed all three such points. They are closed as part of the capacity optimization program that operated during the pandemic, the Mother and Child network explained to Kommersant. They say that they do not plan to develop this area, but they have their own laboratories and conduct a full range of research.

There is very high price competition in the market for online sales of laboratory services, notes Lab4U owner Valery Savanovich. Taking into account the upper middle and premium price segment in which EMC operates, it is difficult to imagine how the network plans to attract new customers, he argues. Patients are accustomed to undergoing tests in a format convenient for them – both price and location, and this niche is occupied by laboratory networks, which are unlikely to be replaced, agrees Maria Kolomentseva. But EMC’s current customers, she believes, will have high network standards in demand.

Laboratory networks are beginning to recover from revenue declines in 2022 as COVID-19 cases decline. Labquest expects that now the revenue growth rate will be 5–7% per year, and in 2024 they predict an increase in patient flow of 1–1.5%. Such indicators, the company summarizes, were typical before the pandemic.

Polina Gritsenko