$10 Finger Stick Blood Tests Illustrate New Quantified Future

I’ve often talked about the variety of health sensors that are quantifying everything about us and how that’s going to change healthcare as we know it. As we have more information about ourselves, it’s impossible for us to keep doing the same things we’ve been doing. One of the challenges we’ve faced with this change is that we need access to the blood to really do quality testing. No one wants to do a venous blood draw to regularly monitor their health data.

This is why I’m so interested in what the quite secretive Theranos is doing with their finger stick blood tests. Yesterday, the big news hit that Theranos got their first FDA clearance for their herpes simplex 1 virus IgG test. Although, as MedCityNews notes, this is the first of 100 pre-submissions they have underway with the FDA.

This is exciting news, but this part of the MedCityNews article is even more exciting for me:

Its HSV-1 test costs $9.07 – one of 153 tests the company says it makes that cost less than $10.

This is a great price point for a lab test and we’d all benefit from this massive decrease in price. I’m still not sure Theranos should have a $9 billion valuation. They still have a long way to go with the FDA, but if they’re able to execute then maybe that valuation isn’t that crazy after all.

Regardless of how Theranos does as a business, I think we’re going to see hundreds of companies like Theranos that continue to make testing more affordable. That’s going to change how we approach healthcare.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

Categories