After all, the device would cut out the need for expensive doctors and nurses!Ī blood test would become something anyone could have done while they were out shopping for no more than ten or twenty dollars. Poor people would suddenly have access to cheap medical care.

Doctors could then advise patients to take extra pills or call an ambulance. The machine could monitor hormone levels and forward the information to healthcare professionals on an hourly or daily basis. Thousands of lives would be saved thanks to early diagnoses.

The duo started imagining a world in which everyone had a Theranos device in his or her home. Medical diagnostic tools would suddenly be at the fingertips of millions of people. It was a machine that promised to revolutionize healthcare – if it could be built. These ranged from vitamin D deficiency to herpes and HIV. The second, toaster-sized machine would perform chemical and conductivity tests to check for 240 common ailments. That device could then be plugged into another, slightly larger gadget which would run diagnostic tests. Their next idea was a credit-card-sized blood-testing machine which would draw a few drops of blood using a pinprick. That’s when the original idea started to take on a new shape. The pair soon realized that microneedles wouldn’t be able to draw enough blood. She founded Theranos with Shaunak Roy, one of her peers at Stanford University.īut there was a snag. It was this fear which gave her a great idea: a wearable patch which would test patients’ blood over the course of a day using microneedles.īuild that, she thought, and you’d not only do away with the need for needles but you’d also have a device which could provide real-time information on bloodwork to assist ongoing diagnoses.īy 2004, she was ready to start putting her idea into practice.

Like many people, Elizabeth Holmes was scared of needles.

Bad blood startup