In order to run a blood test, one would need to have sufficient amount of fresh blood. The thing is, what happens when one is unable to draw enough blood, or the circumstances do not permit it? A certain Elizabeth Holmes is curious to see a future where old-fashioned phlebotomy is reinvented so that a new dawn of comprehensive superfast diagnosis and preventive medicine can be ushered in. Having founded a company known as Theranos, she has worked on a radical blood-testing service that requires just a pinprick and a drop of blood. That single drop of blood is enough to run hundreds of tests, which range from standard cholesterol checks to sophisticated genetic analyses.
This ends up with a more accurate and cheaper method of getting the right results, and needless to say, there are plenty of positives to be taken from this situation. Imagine a new generation of diagnostic tests that could enable one to figure out what’s wrong a whole lot earlier on, where once again, prevention being better than cure holds true here. In fact, Theranos did list down its prices: blood typing, $2.05; cholesterol, $2.99; iron, $4.45. On average, it takes less than 4 hours to receive the relevant results, and emerging markets will most probably benefit the most from it.
Filed in . Read more about Science.