One aspect of the multidimensional mess that is the Theranos story is the company’s leveraging of the Do-It-Yourself ethos to promote its product. Theranos provides consumers with a menu of over 200 low-cost diagnostic blood tests for any array of ailments and diseases.
Here’s the company’s founder, Elizabeth Holmes, at TEDMED in 2014, lacing her stem-winder of a presentation with the ideals of patient self-empowerment.
“My own life’s work in building Theranos is to redefine the paradigm of diagnosis away from one in which people have to present with a symptom in order to get access to information about their bodies,” she said, “to one in which every person, no matter how much money they have or where they live, has access to actionable health information at the time it matters.”
She also pitched the crowd an absurdity:
“(T)oday, I can go buy a deadly, exotic animal, a venomous viper, a military truck or armored vehicle. I can buy a tank … but I can’t order a blood-based pregnancy test, or an allergy test. Because that could be dangerous.”
Theranos is currently waiting for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to render a final decision on whether it will lose its license to operate its labs. But for now the company still does tests at its wellness centers in dozens of Walgreens and other locations in Arizona, plus one in California.
Other startups also offer self-ordered blood tests. WellnessFX, for instance, has a partnership with Quest Diagnostics, and consumers in all but seven states can use the company’s website to Read More …
Source:: Future of You