Comment by justinjlynn
13 years ago
Theranos is a medical laboratory that appears to have developed new methods of measuring lab values in small sample sizes more quickly. This is interesting because it means that instead of a traditional blood draw with a needle and vial requiring a trained phlebotomist and healthy veins, physicians can use blood collected from a finger stick -- a far less invasive and painful procedure. Additionally, it appears that they've managed to keep costs very low by automating everything -- this also improves their accuracy. I would love to get a look at their technology and implementation. From a biogeek's perspective this is insanely great.
That is a pretty stunning board of directors as well. I don't doubt their CEO can get an introduction to, and lunch with, nearly anyone on the planet.
This board seems heavily geared to do deals for defense-related applications. That's fine; getting deals with the Armed Forces and VA is feasible and quite rewarding.
What they overtly lack is connections to the healthcare world. I'm surprised they aren't publicly roped into Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic or Kaiser, as they to support novel technologies in this space. I suppose you can argue that the business model is fundamentally incompatible, but I've seen Mayo and Kaiser go in anyway; they can acquire these labs and roll them into operations pretty easily.
Serious question: what economic incentive does the healthcare world have to adopt something like this?
If it's a finger prick, there's less to mark up.
From the outside, it seems like the entire healthcare industry is built on being purposefully inefficient so as to create large costs that they can in turn mark up.
To the VA, inefficiency is a problem. In the healthcare world in general, it doesn't seem to bother anyone.
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The BOD (or "Board" as the company calls it) seems a little strange to me as if she runs in rarified circles. While I'm sure folks of such stature could provide some assistance, I have a hard time believing they are acting under traditional BOD-like activities. And where's the management team or is this a one-person affair?
That BOD is stunning with heavy national security/ military operations. I almost thought it was a CIA cover company.
The application is interesting.
Fascinating that they're all national security related, except for the ex-CEO of Wells Fargo. I'm honestly curious how that came about...
maybe some sort of outgrowth from rapid triage/battlefield medicine tech? I know there's been a lot of pentagon efforts to figure out how to treat soldiers in the field more quickly, but mostly with trauma applications.
It has Henry Kissinger in it... jesus.
She has some interesting videos here on "how to build a team". http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2198
Wow. She must be a pretty amazing woman to have collected such strong allies.
I'd have lunch with her.
With the volumes they're dealing with and the automation they tout I bet they're using integrated microfluidic chips with built in sensor technology. That's so cool and it makes sense given the time they spent in stealth mode since that's a rather new technology and getting it certified must've taken some time. Looking a patents and bingo, they have patents on microfluidic techniques. Awesome. Eventually they might have a medlab in a box -- neat.
You appear to be interested and aware of the current state of clinical chemistry. Are you aware of any HN/Slashdot-esque sites for this pursuit? One of my main areas of hobbyist interest this year is biochemical assays and health diagnostic mechanisms, but there is a lot of chaff in my google searches.
Any pointers would be appreciated. My email is in my profile if you would like to discuss it more in depth.
The diybio mailing list has many interesting discussions: http://diybio.org/
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Given that they are going up against massive, automated operations like those of Labcorp and Quest Diagnostics ($9B market cap each), they'll probably need this tech to keep up.
While the thumb-prick and low sample volumes are cool, in the grand scheme of patient care they are somewhat gimmicky. Until doctors request higher-frequency testing, this doesn't pinch that hard. Still cool.
The big sign that they need to be wielding novel capabilities to compete with Quest and Labcorp is the offering of their menu at half of the medicare reimbursement rate. Each of those companies run ~40% gross margins off of medicare reimbursement, so Theranos without novel tech would be running a pretty substantial loss.
Have you set foot inside a Quest or Labcorp location? They are pretty terrible. Definitely a disruptable space...
Low volume samples are important in pediatrics at least (wife a Dr) At the hospital she works all of their samples are low volume already. Plus critical kids get ffrequent samples depending on the level of monitoring needed. For babies you obviously have no choice or they could become anemic. Plus not all kids like seeing a vial fill up.
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Until doctors request higher-frequency testing
What about patients wanting higher-frequency testing? What if the test machine were sitting in my local drugstore, and I could go in, swipe my credit card, and have it run a test on a drop of my blood whenever I wanted to?
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I'd say it's more painful than a blood draw if the phlebotomist gets it right on the first stick, less painful if the phlebotomist is going to have to try many times or go for atypical access sites.
I'd be more wary of potassium and other electrolytes, but it would be interesting to see a comparison to venipuncture.