Numbers-obsessed patients fueling direct-to-consumer lab test market

The falling cost of lab tests and the nation's growing fascination with self-monitoring has produced a strange new phenomenon: the lab-test junkie, reports Smart Money. And folks who are "compulsively obsessed by the numbers" are a welcome source of revenue, David Lovely, CEO of Health Testing Centers, which offers direct-to-consumer testing, told the publication. The $65 billion lab industry is growing 6 percent a year and the direct-to-consumer segment is increasing even faster: 15 percent to 20 percent annually, the publication reports. Article