At-home faecal calprotectin testing that offers lab-comparable results

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including conditions such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, requires lifelong management. In the first blog in this series, we looked at the benefits of remote monitoring with the SmarTest^® Calprotectin Home test (Preventis^®) for patient empowerment and faster results. This time, we’re examining the impact of this approach on the healthcare environment and, crucially, the laboratory-comparable results that underpin effective remote monitoring.

The clinical burden of IBD

IBD is characterised by periods of remission interrupted by unpredictable flares, which can cause abdominal pain, diarrhoea, fatigue and other debilitating symptoms that significantly affect quality of life. These flares often require urgent diagnosis and clinical intervention, potentially leading to hospital admission. As a result, IBD places a significant burden on both patients and the NHS, costing an estimated £720 million annually.¹ The annual cost of treating a patient with ulcerative colitis increases from approximately £1,700 in remission to more than £10,700 during a severe flare.² As patient numbers continue to rise year on year,¹ there is an urgent need to improve care pathways to promote earlier interventions, better patient outcomes and more efficient allocation of resources.

Challenges in IBD monitoring

Close monitoring of disease activity is essential for achieving key treatment goals in IBD, including deep remission and flare prevention. Endoscopy remains the gold standard for assessing mucosal inflammation, but it is neither practical nor sustainable for routine monitoring. The measurement of calprotectin in stool samples provides a more practical alternative, giving an early indication of disease activity or loss of therapeutic response. Calprotectin is released by neutrophils in inflamed intestinal tissue and is excreted in stool, with faecal calprotectin levels often rising even before clinical symptoms worsen. Research shows that monitoring calprotectin levels can help to identify relapse risk, evaluate response to biologics and allow earlier intervention before symptoms escalate.³ The British Society of Gastroenterology’s 2025 guidelines also recommend faecal calprotectin testing for both the diagnosis and ongoing monitoring of IBD.⁴

Regular faecal calprotectin testing provides clinicians with valuable insights into intestinal inflammation, helping them to distinguish between active disease, functional symptoms and potential flares to make more proactive treatment decisions. For patients, regular monitoring may also provide reassurance and give them a greater sense of control over their condition. Rather than relying solely on symptoms, they have objective information about what’s happening in their bodies. Faecal calprotectin has therefore become an invaluable biomarker for assessing intestinal inflammation, but traditional laboratory-based testing presents several challenges.

Patients are typically required to collect samples at home, then post them or return them to their GP surgery or hospital clinic and wait for laboratory analysis. Samples are tested in accordance with NICE guidelines⁵ and British Society of Gastroenterology guidelines,⁴ allowing triage of patients presenting with flare symptoms. In practice, turnaround times using this method can extend to several weeks due to unavoidable logistical delays, meaning results may no longer accurately reflect current disease activity. These delays can have significant consequences, with some patients deteriorating and requiring hospitalisation before results are returned. Others may undergo unnecessary additional investigations or treatment escalation – including prescription of steroids – before reliable objective data on their disease status is available.

The same challenges affect , as faecal calprotectin is widely used as a marker of disease activity and treatment efficacy in studies evaluating new IBD therapies. The long turnaround times associated with traditional sample collection and testing can contribute to missed samples, incomplete datasets and high participant drop-out. These issues highlight the need for new disease monitoring approaches – such as remote testing models – to accelerate turnaround times for routine testing and aid the development of new therapies.

Delivering clinically meaningful benefits with remote monitoring

Remote IBD monitoring allows patients to take control of managing their own condition, and aligns closely with broader NHS ambitions to expand out-of-hospital care pathways and patient-initiated follow-up (PIFU) models.^6-8 These approaches aim to empower patients to manage their chronic conditions more proactively, allowing any changes to be identified earlier and, potentially, enabling interventions before full flares develop. To accomplish this shift to PIFU, clinicians require scientifically robust testing solutions that are accurate, reliable, easy to use and capable of providing clinically significant results in real time.

The SmarTest Calprotectin Home test puts quantitative faecal calprotectin testing directly into the hands of patients. The rapid in vitro lateral flow assay uses gold-conjugated anti-calprotectin antibodies to measure faecal calprotectin levels from a small stool sample. Patients complete the test at home using a simple, pocket-sized kit and receive accurate, quantitative results via a companion smartphone app in less than 20 minutes. The app guides users through every stage of the testing process – with clear instructions and animations – before automatically analysing the completed test and generating a lab-quality result. Results are securely transferred to healthcare teams via an online portal, providing immediate visibility of disease activity without requiring tedious manual data entry or time-consuming laboratory processing.

Importantly, SmarTest provides results with accuracy equal to laboratory analysis; many home calprotectin tests are limited to upper measurement thresholds of approximately 800-1,000 μg/g, whereas SmarTest also offers a broad quantitative measuring range of 35-2,000 μg/g. This provides clinicians with greater visibility across the full spectrum of disease activity, enabling more informed treatment decisions, particularly in patients with significant inflammation. A number of NHS IBD services – such as St Mark’s Hospital in London and the University Hospital Southampton (UHS) NHS Foundation Trust – are already using the assay in remote monitoring programmes, providing healthcare professionals with real-time data that can guide timely treatment decisions. Adoption of this assay is also growing within clinical trials, where rapid, reliable and decentralised testing can enable more efficient data collection and accelerate research into novel treatments.

Underpinning the future of IBD care

The potential applications of lab-comparable quantitative calprotectin testing extend beyond routine home monitoring. SmarTest aligns closely with NHS ambitions to expand PIFU pathways, and could also play a role in flare clinics for patients presenting with suspected IBD activity. This would provide an accurate picture of disease activity at the point of care, reducing uncertainty and enabling timely interventions. The technology also offers significant opportunities within clinical research, where robust decentralised testing could improve patient retention, streamline data collection and reduce dependence on overstretched laboratory services.

As IBD prevalence continues to increase, healthcare providers require new, clinically robust approaches to disease management. SmarTest Calprotectin Home combines the convenience of at-home testing with quantitative, laboratory-standard performance, delivering reliable, real-time insights into disease activity in under 20 minutes. A growing body of evidence and endorsement from leading IBD clinicians underline that SmarTest is a clinically sound tool for decentralised faecal calprotectin testing, providing the analytical performance required for confident decision making in modern IBD pathways.

Look out for the third blog in this series to learn more about how patient-centred IBD care could save time and resources.

Unlock the benefits of the SmarTest Faecal Calprotectin Home test for your IBD service.

Empowering patients with remote IBD monitoring

Read our first blog in this series and discover how the SmarTest® Calprotectin Home test helps IBD patients to manage their condition remotely, enabling faster clinical support.