When I worked as the computer systems administrator at Medical Diagnostics, a community medical testing lab (from 1988-94), occasionally I would give a tube of blood for control tests. The experience involved the phlebotomists putting a tourniquet on my arm, finding a vein, inserting a needle and releasing the tourniquet so the blood would fill a vacuolated tube. The analysis machines at the time could sometimes do multiple tests on the same sample, but often patients had blood drawn into different tubes for haematology, biochemistry and serology.
In 2003, Elizabeth Holmes, at the age of 19 dropped out of Stanford University and invented a way to run 30 lab tests on a single drop of blood.
Collecting just a pin-prick of blood, Theranos' Nanotainer reduces the blood required for testing to about 1/1000 of the size of traditional phlebotomy.
Other innovations from Theranos include improving the test and assays for faster results. Instead of growing cultures which takes days, they measure the DNA of pathogens. And by automating the processes as much as possible, they can offer much lower and transparent pricing, with the potential of saving billions of dollars in the US health system.
Read more at Wired: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/02/elizabeth-holmes-theranos/
And Theranos: http://www.theranos.com/
In 2003, Elizabeth Holmes, at the age of 19 dropped out of Stanford University and invented a way to run 30 lab tests on a single drop of blood.
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| Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos |
Other innovations from Theranos include improving the test and assays for faster results. Instead of growing cultures which takes days, they measure the DNA of pathogens. And by automating the processes as much as possible, they can offer much lower and transparent pricing, with the potential of saving billions of dollars in the US health system.
Read more at Wired: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/02/elizabeth-holmes-theranos/
And Theranos: http://www.theranos.com/