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.
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.
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?
That's it. No doctors needed. I just chatted to my doctor siblings about this over lunch ... they shot this idea out the water on the premise that it is indeed gimmicky and they wouldn't use it to make any substantial changes to patient treatment based on their results - they'll need "more reliable" testing. I could hardly get a word in! :-)
Except, I kept on saying, maybe the service is offered directly to people - without a doctor's consult.
Hell, what do I know! Nice to see innovation in fields other than information technology though.
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.