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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."
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.
Not really. I've got this hang up about actually wanting to be a part of raising the children I'll (hopefully) one day father.
Besides, sperm donation doesn't exactly save lives, whereas blood donation does. Last Wednesday marked my 20th donation (2.5 gallons) and the second year in a row I managed to make six donations in a calendar year, the maximum allowed in the United States and Canada. Earlier in the year I even got a letter from the ARC saying that one of my donations had been transfused into two different patients somewhere out in Buffalo.
Do you know of a way to make that kind of a positive impact for less than an hour of your time?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Blood from the tip of your penis is actually the best blood to use for tests. If you complain about it you're just a problem patient.
I imagine that Walgreens is going to run only a few tests - cholesterol, pregnancy, HIV antibody.
Well, it looks like a few more than that:
http://www.theranos.com/test-menu?ref=our_solution
I didn't bother to count; maybe 200 in that list? Heavily tilted towards drug detection and STDs, but still a pretty good variety.
Why would I make an appointment with my doctor for 4 weeks from now, drive over, get a referral to a testing center, drive over, get stuck and drained, drive home, make another appointment for 4 weeks to get the results, drive over, and have someone read me results with no background info, when I could go to Walgreens, walk out with the results 10 minutes later, and spend 20 minutes on Google finding out what they really mean?
I would say that the fact that I can get results from Walgreens changes everything.
And the worms ate into his brain.
This is the main reason this is good. Just like giving flu shots at the pharmacy. Technology has advanced so much, at yet, in the medical field, prices have only skyrocketed, because there's strict limits on who can do what. If diabetics can give themselves their own insulin injections, there's no reason the average Joe shouldn't be able to give themselves a flu shot, or at least get one from somebody who doesn't cost as much to employ as a nurse. Same goes for simple blood tests. For many blood tests, there's very little reason to go to a specialized lab, so they can charge extravagant amounts of money for putting a drop of blood on a piece of paper and looking at what color it turns. We need to bring the cost of healthcare down, especially for routine procedures if we want people to be able to afford medical care in the future.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Indeed. It's really a failure of the system that I can't go to "Bob's discount MRI and Bait Shop" for the "cheaper at 4AM" discount. There are only so many MRI machines in the world, so MRIs are far too expensive. Why aren't there more? Why are any of them idle at 4AM? A system that doesn't respond well to demand by increasing supply has issues.
And you see this all over healthcare. Sure, it takes a doctor to understand what test results mean in the context of patient care. But the tests themselves are just technology, and nothing brings cost down like the march of technological progress. Something's fundamentally broken when we're not seeing the cost of high-tech tests fall quickly over time.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Nope. Insurance companies have an interest in increasing medical costs.
Under Obamacare health insurance companies are allowed a maximum of 20% of the cost of medical care. The only way health insurance companies can increase their profits is by increasing medical care costs.
Man, I hope you aren't anywhere near the legislative process. People like you are why we can't have nice things.
I have ten times more motivation and available time to research than my doctor does; he's just trying to last through his 80 patients a day and not kill anyone. His training and experience are certainly valuable, but for the most part when I'm talking to a doctor s/he's either (a) a generalist with a little bit of familiarity with me and a little bit of familiarity with what might be wrong with me, or (b) a specialist that knows a great deal about one particular thing that *might* be wrong with me but knows exactly dick about me personally.
I, on the other hand, have excellent computer skills and search fu, can read, understand and critique research in some disciplines (a skill that is highly transferable, by the way), and know a great deal about myself. I'd *much* rather be able to manage my own treatment and consult with a doctor when I need insight or specialized skills.
cogito ergo dubito