Comment by pdonis
13 years ago
what economic incentive does the healthcare world have to adopt something like this?
Not much, which is why this service should not be offered through the standard healthcare system. I can see two other ways to do it:
(1) I walk into a drugstore, sit down at the testing machine, select the tests I want, swipe my credit card, and the machine takes a drop of blood from my finger, runs the test, and gives me a printout of the results.
(2) Home testing kits for every common lab test, not just blood sugar.
Note that Quest Diagnostics has a drugstore partnership with CVS[1], directly competing with Theranos+Wallgreens. Labcorp has similar offerings, although some are whitelabeled.
[1] http://ir.questdiagnostics.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=82068&p=irol-...
But these tests still require large blood samples, and they have to go back to the lab to be tested, right? So you can't just walk into the drugstore, get tested, and walk out with the results.
And it looks like the drugstore option is being pursued, according to a WSJ article on Theranos:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732412300457905...