Sunday, October 26, 2014

Are You Scared of Needles?

If you are, you're in luck.  Elizabeth Holmes, a Standford University drop out with knowledge in both chemical and electrical engineering, has been trying to revolution blood work for the past decade.  Her lab, Theranos, allows small samples of blood to be used to complete up to thirty tests in a matter of hours.  This is not just a small sample, by the way.  This is a literal drop of blood:  a finger prick.

What is so unique about Theranos’s system is the ability to test a single drop of blood for many different conditions right in house.  Vials of blood at not taken, they are not mislabeled and handed off to the wrong people, and it does not take days to transport the blood or the data from various facilities.  The results are digital and transmitted from a single lab to Theranos’s database in seconds.

Without going into any detail about the process, Holmes has partnered with Walgreens to create facilities in California and Arizona for citizens to try the Theranos system.  They hope to spread across the country, and eventually around the globe, revolutionizing the way bloodwork is done and healthcare is provided all around the world.

So what does this mean for society?  On a surface level, it saves people a lot of time and a lot of money.  A simple finger prick can take seconds as opposed to the minutes required for filling several vials of blood.  Test results can be processed in hours instead of days.  Tests can cost fractions of their normal cost for Medicare and Madicaid patients.  Obviously, this allows for shorter lab visits, faster diagnoses, and cheaper costs for health care, especially for those without insurance.

The benefits, however, go much deeper.  Many people have more than a simple dislike for needles, but a legitimate fear of them, as well as the sight of blood.  Some people feel so much anxiety about getting bloodwork done that they would rather just deal with whatever sickness they have.  This can be incredibly dangerous, especially for conditions and diseases like HIV, other STDs, diabetes, and heart disease.  Theranos’s process actually allows for patients to get diagnosed earlier on, in less time, for less money, with much less physical pain and anxiety.  This means patients can receive treatment sooner as well.

This also means that patients’ progress with different drugs and treatments can be tracked more efficiently as well.  Patients who have begun a particular drug regime can simply have their finger pricked once a week to see if any changes in their condition have occurred, as opposed to waiting weeks for new scripts, getting vials of blood drawn, and waiting days to get the results.  This truly expedites the process, allowing for better tailored, efficient treatments for every patient.

With the current Ebola scare going on, this definitely makes me considered the possibilities of revolutionizing healthcare in and out of the United States.  This kind of technology could help not only U.S. citizens, but people worldwide, especially those in more underdeveloped countries, such as those where Ebola is such an issue (Liberia, Guinea, etc.).  I am very interested to see where Theranos is in five years and if it lives up to its potential.  After all, Holmes reminds us that “The art of phlebotomy originated with bloodletting in 1400 B.C. and the modern clinical lab emerged in the 1960s—and it has not fundamentally evolved since then.”  I think it’s definitely time for an upgrade.


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