Elizabeth Holmes: Youngest self-made female billionaire revolutionizing health care - CBS News
Maybe she deserves those billions; like idiots we have been giving vials and vials of blood for these tests. The question is, is it too good to be true? Biochemists, microbiologists, docs, chime in.
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Am none of the above. Good for her. Hope this is real.
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Dang, good for her!! If only I had the guts to do it as well but… Eh good for her haha.
It’s a fantastic idea and already in use for micro and molecular biology for several years now … Micro assays …
Early days for this .. but a welcome advance. Assay accuracy will be key.
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Essays need not be accurate. More important to be interesting with a pinch of accuracy thrown in.
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yeah they are striving to be billionaires, not striving to make a difference to the world. smh
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did you read the article even? She is revolutionizing lab testing .. was lucky to seen it first hand
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When you say accuracy, they just have to be inline with what we see with vials of blood? Is there a better way to measure it?
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Fortune favors the brave. Go for it Aqua!
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lol more like did YOU even read the article. I’m not talking about the girl, I’m talking about the ending quote about other kids striving to be like her
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being on par with the current (outdated) way of testing will be a start. There is a lot of room for improvement in current technology … currently multiple errors occur due to inaccurate sample size, sample hemolysis, machine breakdown, inaccurate machine calibration and fairly often due to the composition of the sample (blood0 itself. Blood has a complex chemical composition … not everything is tested or testable on/in whole blood … sometimes you need to spin out the cells and look at serum … then there is the composition of the nanotube itself … at the micro-assay level … where every molecular interaction counts it becomes an important question/issue to address as compared to the macro-sample technology we use currently. i could go on but i dont think this is the right forum for it …
on point with the topic though … i do think theranos is off to a good start. im happy to see lab testing going in this direction. very invest-able idea too IMHO.
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in macro-sample method, do they get multiple readings to eliminate errors associated with homogeneity? I can see that could be a big issue with micro-sampling.
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No. that would require additional sample .. and as it is … too many patients freaks out at “so many tubes of blood” being drawn. Also, multiple reads = multiple runs = not feasible when turn around needs to be fast … here too as it is … patients complain quite a bit about “wait times” often with no understanding of the process of their evaluation of a non-existent illness :halo: … but i digress and thats a whole another topic.
its also not feasible because hospital labs are already overwhelmed with large volumes to tests being run (partly due to over testing on the physicians end … but then that happens because everybody and their dog want a workup for everything and they want t NOW) , poor staffing and finite number of equipment.
one big advantage of micro assays is being able to automate very very large numbers of samples very efficiently and cost effectively … once this becomes mainstream and all biochemical bugs are ironed out … we can expect great precision. speed+precision=happy patients and doctors and another giant step towards instantaneous (or should I say milisecondanous) gratification.
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“Needle free” is the key part here. That’s something every investor and financier could understand. Cheaper, disposable ways to test blood have been in development for a little while now, albeit many are far from market ready. It’s interesting to think about assays in every home but the real benefit will be to rural areas where power grids and reliable lab setups are a rarity. If anyone is interested, searching for “point of care” and “microfluidics” in Google Scholar is a good start. The idea is to reduce lab scale to a wafer the size of your hand.
And I agree with what one of the posters above said; people often chase entrepreneurship for the money (and that’s certainly a factor) but you should have a real need/solution in mind.
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Insha’Allah OYMWA, but got a different plan in mind. Dropping out of college is not exactly something that sits well with Pakistani parents haha.
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I have some questions about the wafer. What kind of hands? big, masculine, bulky hands or are we talking dainty, small and petite? Also is the wafer chocolate or vanilla? Nobody likes strawberry thats for sure. 
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AMAT shares were pushed up by speculators spotting the mention of wafers
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Can Hakeems put their 2 cent in? I mean we’ve been fixing people for eons.
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Hakeems put in paise, not cents
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agree. though to be absolutely technical about it … its not really “needle free” … there is a needle, a small one … similar to one used for pricking a finger to draw a drop of blood for sugar checks. now as a consumer who has experienced both … i’d say it hurts the same. a pinch is a pinch is a pinch after all …
but there are definitely ppl who’d prefer the “needle-less” method.
for now there is no utility of this system in hospitals though (ER and inpatient).