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Affordable Blood Work In Four Hours Coming To Pharmacies
kkleiner writes "With the cost of healthcare services increasing, it's welcome news that a recent deal between Walgreens and Theranos will bring rapid, accurate, low-cost blood testing to the local pharmacy. A pinprick of blood from a finger is enough to run any number of a la carte diagnostic tests with results in four hours or less. The automation of blood testing in one convenient machine may mean that the demand for clinical technicians may decline, but the benefits of making blood analysis more accessible to everyone is enormous."
I'm always a bit awed at the speed of the blood iron/hemoglobin pinprick test when I give blood. 15 seconds from pinprick to result. I guess that's the exception and not the rule where blood testing is concerned (something tells me the HIV/Hepatitis tests they run aren't nearly that fast), but it's still a neat little trick to marvel at.
Of course, that stupid little spring loaded thing freaks me out more than the 16 gauge IV they use for the actual donation, but that's probably a different conversation...... thank god I'm not diabetic.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
And just how accurate are these cheap, quick tests going to be?
A pinprick of blood from a finger
Why does the blood always have to come from a finger? That's where all the nerves are. Why can't you get the drop of blood from your elbow or some other place?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
that the winner of the international science fair came up with...detected Lung, Pancreatic and one other type of cancer using a carbon nanotube and a handful of parts he picked up at Home Depot. Cost of the test? About $0.04 and highly accurate.
What will it cost after it's commercialized? We'll see.
If you need a blood test the doctor/hospital will likely take the blood perform test and charge accordingly leaving the patient out of the loop entirely. If this test does actually force a lower reimbursement rate, they will specify checking for conditions not covered by the test so a more expensive one has to be done
Since my health plan went Obamacare compliant and a doctor visit went from $25 copay to a $6000 deductible, now I get a separate bill from the lab company every time my wife or kids go to the doctor. Seriously - I just call Solstas Lab Partners every month and ask how much I owe because there are so many bills.
In house testing or at the local pharmacy would be great.
(Yeah, mod me Troll, but it's still true.)
:wq
There are far easier--and less obvious--ways of getting someone's DNA.
Wow, thanks so much for this insightful and completely topical post!
I think I'd like to see this in my doctors office. They could employ someone to take care of that, make blood work more quick for diagnostics, and patients wouldn't have to go to yet somewhere else for blood work, then everyone waits for results. I could be wrong, but it feels like this is something a doctors office might be more well invested in for the patient. And if the cost is low enough, then perhaps it's a service they add on regularly so as to insure there's not something cropping up that goes undiagnosed between visits...since we all know that particularly men don't want to go to the doctor unless something is really wrong.
But, it goes back to doctors being more invested in patients and their positive health and less about getting as many people through the door as possible in a day. However, that's probably a whole different discussion.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Might be my european background but: Where I live the general population is not savvy enough to be left alone with a printout of Hb, Hk, MCV, MCHC, Ferritin, Transferrin, ASAT, ALAT, ... AFP, CEA-19, PSA... god forbid! The test alone is meaningless without interpretation -- that's something only qualified staff can and should do and it should be explained to the patient in a one-on-one conversation.
Use this chart to quickly interpret blood test results:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Reference_ranges_for_blood_tests_-_by_mass.svg
(shamelessly stolen from this post a few months back)
Someone asked, here's the answer: a whole lot better than the labwork you get now. Example: HDL tests are allowed to have a 30% margin of error. Theranos' tests are accurate to within 10%.
This will save money, and improve healthcare outcomes. No upside to waiting 3 days for test results. Next stop - subdermal monitors!
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
You're assuming the patients will be allowed to take the test in the first place. The last time someone tried this, the ATF (yes, WTF do blood tests have to do with alcohol, tobacco, or firearms?) beat the fuck out of the two medical students who were trying to help people. The AMA will make sure people die if they try to compete with the medical cartel like this.
As someone who frequently faints or comes extremely close while having blood drawn, I am extremely excited about this tech. I hate getting blood drawn so much that I have a tendency to avoid scheduling routine physicals, which I know is not smart since yearly physicals are so crucial to spotting trouble before things get too bad. I don't just hate passing out (or nearly), but I hate needles in general, so having that needle stuck in my arm for the duration of the draw (or the frequent misses and retries) along with the whole losing consciousness is torture for me. Finger-prick was never a problem for me, though. I imagine I'm not alone, so if this means more people doing some preventative maintenance, then it likely also means less emergency room visits and major procedures resulting from ignored or uncaught conditions that would have otherwise been easily treated.
I just hope that my insurance will accept this method. I just got a letter in the mail from them the other day reminding me that they do not work with all labs.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
if it's like the Affordable Care Act then it means you'll be forced pay twice as much for a bunch of tests you don't need!
Spam is certainly a form of "information", but it's nearly universally unwanted. Which sums up your bullshit neatly.
So - don't forget to check the box at the bottom of the form saying that you agree to their privacy policy. (whereby, your blood will give them a DNA sequence that they can sell as marketing information - which funds the tests. And the CEO's retirement plan).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
may mean that the demand for clinical technicians may decline, but the benefits of making blood analysis more accessible to everyone is enormous
Every invention makes a few jobs obsolete but opens up many more.
With it being easier and cheaper there'll be more demand. That'll mean more tests. So the technicians will have as much work as before. With more results that opens up the opportunity for more jobs elsewhere dealing with the results, and big data analysis of results.
Find a lab that will let you lay down while they do the draw. You faint during the draw because of a drop in blood pressure, lying down will ensure that more blood remains in the brain when this happens, which will prevent (or at least postpone) fainting. Get a few successful draws under your belt and you might find that you don't have to keep laying down, since your body will have moved past the negative association.
YMMV, but it worked for me, I used to have the exact same problem and managed to conquer it to the point of becoming a regular blood donor. I could tell you some real good stories about passing out in hospitals though. :)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I used to look after the local Lab Management System for a medical lab here in New Zealand.
Here blood tests are pretty much free when ordered by a doctor - IIRC the ministry of health gives the tester around $5 for the simple tests... if you walked off the street they might charge you $US15 for doing the paperwork.
The results were ready in a few hours, and then an EDI-style clearing house is used to deliver the results back into the doctor's patient management system, so a four hour turn-around was not unheard of (as long as the sample was taken at the lab and not the doctor's surgery).
I reread that and it sounded like I was implying I am a Medical Doctor. I am not. I used to run some very in depth analysis with multi zone/state/country hospitals.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Can we pay cash at the local pharmacy and have the test done anonymously?
According to Theranos' web site the Walgreens in downtown Palo Alto has one. Looking at their price list, the tests are very affordable for people without insurance
I was skimming, and I thought it said you donated 2.5 gallons of sperm. This didn't register immediately, and I was half-way down the page before it hit me. I had to scroll back up to see from the context that you were talking about blood donations.
If your doctor has requested you take a blood test, you can have that blood test done at any facility of your choice. I have personally transferred my doctor's blood tests to other facilities.
In California, patients are prohibited from obtaining blood tests without a doctor's request. And, the test results must be sent only to the doctor without providing the patient with a copy.
Comprehensive metabolic panels (CMPs) and CBCs are the bread and butter of companies like Quest Diagnostics and Labcorp. Might be a good time not to own any of their stock...or at least, not once a working version of this comes out.
Due to Slashdot's sudden adoption of schizoid Flash-based advertising (animation sliding ads in and out of their sub-iframe, plus they are Flash-based), I have removed Slashdot from my ad blocking whitelist. Make a public, high-visibility post in the future apologizing for this breach of the user trust and I will re-whitelist Slashdot.
There is zero excuse for these hyper-annoying advertisements.
-- A disgusted, anonymous coward
Not, the person you responded to didn't even say they were in the US. Get over yourselves.
Signed, someone in a country with real healthcare.
...
We really need a sign near the comments that reads: "don't feed the trolls".
Tomorrow is another day...
I know a lot of people who buy diagnostic tests on their genome and their blood.
The problem is that you don't know what the risks "mean".
Knowledge is not always wisdom.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"European" != a country
So? European health care has a median among countries, and it's still valid to compare that median to American health care.
Wow, Vitamin D 25-OH for only $20.35 according to their page. that +$200.00 less than LabCorp charges. It's nice to see Silicon Valley expanding its menu.
repeating political propaganda is NOT giving information.
And getting information from you and fox is just like getting it from a NAZI youth. You are fascists who loves to suck on the hard-on of some of the worst leaders in history.
Something. that a rational and good fix of the health care system would have eliminated.
MRI machines cost the same as they did fifteen years ago, but Pentium II machines cost one twentieth. Why is that?
This is what you get when you put people from the University of Chicago in charge.
A test done at a pharmacy, with little control, could result in a higher chance of cross contamination.
I have no problem with the concept/idea. I'm just concerned about quality if there aren't any standards applied to the process.
It is $510 to get basic blood work here. (Just had it done a month ago). We don't have a wallgreens, but still .... If this is cheaper ....
No the cost of the MRI is much to do with the need for supper high temperature superconductors, liquid nitrogen cooling tolerant magnets are an improvement on the liquid helium/hydrogen ones but in terms of cost we would need to get them to work on "normal" refrigeration to see another big price drop (but what a price drop that will be).
When I think of Walgreens, I instantly think of airtight, impervious security and attentive employees obsessed with getting detailed work dead solid perfect the first time, every time.
Meanwhile, on planet Earth...
This info (I mean the 70% of it that is kept with the correct customer) will be hacked within two months. And buried deep within the 1-point EULA you have to agree to is permission to share all this information with every health insurer - especially your current one. In fact, the order will be: first your rates go through the roof, *then* word is passed along to you by the snail-est of mail that they found something in your tests.
I worked for seven years for a device manufacture (1998 to 2005) whose primary product was blood tests. I saw, on a regular basis, invoices to labs charging around $1.25/test. Over the years I had at least 20 tests as a patient done at commercial labs. I was stunned to see that the labs were charging ~$50 for these same tests which would be discounted to the insurance company to about ~$30. There are added costs to the labs (running controls that use tests but do not produce revenue, etc) but I have never been able to get from a 1.25 -> 50. These were automated tests: ordered by remote computer, the tests ran when the bar coded blood showed up on the instrument, reported the results electronically. Some of the major labs are publicly traded companies and are not making outrageous profits and it is a competitive business both at the manufacturing and lab level.
This is just another example of medical care costing way more then it should. I don’t have answers but something is seriously wrong.
"With the cost of healthcare services increasing"
Healthcare costs aren't going up, what is going on is price gouging by the insurance companies.
No.
Slashdot is filled with extremist Democrat socialist leaning voters and has forced this tyrannical monstrosity upon the people of the US, not single handedly of course, but you all did your part like good little drones and you all know it.
Slashdot has quite a variety of political stances and belief systems, and some who don't like being affiliated with any of them.
We also have at least a small share of idiots, as you have displayed.