Reply to The Dropout on Hulu (Elizabeth Holmes story)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t understand the Seimens machines. Does that mean that there was already the technology to do what she claimed she was going to do?[/quote]

Both the podcast and the book (Bad Blood) gets into this much more. As others explained, the Siemens machines had been around for a while and that was the tech Theranos was trying to replace -- they were trying to create a more efficient, portable device so that people who had to have these tests wouldn't have to go to a testing facility and produce several vials of blood. If you've ever had your blood drawn for tests like this, you know what a burden it is. Whenever I have to get more than one vial drawn, I pretty much have to calculate an extra hour into the appointment because I will need to recover. It sucks.

The original idea at Theranos was actually to be able to sell these machines directly to doctor's offices or even individuals to keep in their homes if they needed blood draws a lot or had a condition that required certain tests to be run frequently. Most blood tests are sent to labs who use those Siemens machines, and this adds to the time it takes to get results, as well as cost and insurance issues because the labs will bill your insurance separately from the doctor's office where the blood was taken and sometimes the insurance company doesn't cover the particular lab... it's a mess and it actually makes sense that someone would want to find a way to make this process better.

In the podcast and book they really get into why Theranos using the Siemens machines was a huge deal. When they set up the Walgreens partnership, patients reported these weird experience with results from the pin prick tests. But then Theranos would sometimes have them do a full blood draw (not the promised pin prick) and of course patients noticed this because that was the whole point -- I don't have to sit here and wait for the person to find a vein and draw a full vial and maybe have to do a re-draw if the first vein doesn't produce enough, etc. It turns out Theranos was running these draw through the Siemens machines. And yes, it was in part as a quality control measure, but since the Theranos machines straight up did not work, the outcome was that basically they were just using the Siemens machines for the tests.

And keep in mind that the blood tests were never supposed to leave Walgreens at all. The point was that the Theranos machines were supposed to be onsite. But since those machines didn't work, Theranos would set up theses elaborate systems to send the blood to their own testing facility, or sometimes they'd even pay to send them to a 3rd party lab, and then report the results back. But it would take days, not minutes as promised.

I mean, it was just incredibly obvious from the minute they launched in Walgreens (and at that cancer facility in Arizona) that they didn't have the technology. But people cut them slack because the promise of what they were suggesting was really, really valuable to patients and doctors, and they were willing (at first) to let them "iron out the kinks". What was unforgivable is that these were not kinks, the machines never worked, they knew they never worked, and they straight up lied to sick people and their doctors in ways that were truly damaging. It's messed up.[/quote]

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