Another drop out become successful entrepreneur. Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of her sophomore year at Stanford to pursue her entrepreneurial dream. She dropped out as a chemical engineering major to create a blood diagnosing startup. The problem of correctly diagnosing was the problem that Elizabeth noticed. Too many people were either having to wait hours for expensive testing to get done at hospitals or they were incorrectly diagnosing themselves online. The company, Theranos, created a mini blood testing lab that is the size of a microwave. It is portable and does a majority of the tests that usually takes a large lab to do, with only small samples of blood. This method gets results faster and at a fraction of the price. With this, the company even innovated the finger prick device into something that requires less blood and gives a more accurate result. not only this, but all the devices are being produced in the USA to create American jobs.
If you have ever watched an Episode of Grey’s Anatomy, there will usually be someone complaining about labs taking too long or patients freaking out about the cost of taking too many tests. This product innovates the entire lab process into one device. It is like a computer that blood is an input, and it condenses all the tests into one place. My opinion is that they are focused on creating a cheaper method, so why aren’t the producing in the cheapest way possible, overseas? What are your thoughts on this?
They probably aren’t producing overseas because they want the highest quality material they can get for a machine that handles blood. Accurate and fast diagnoses are what they strive for, so they’re not cutting corners just to make another buck or two.
Ouch… Just looked up Theranos, and 3 days ago she laid off 43% of her employees and stopped producing these mini labs. Her net worth as of June is $0 because of multiple investigations into her company.
Learned about her in ethics a short while back, interesting to learn how sometimes great ideas (in theory) lack practicality. Glad to see her story mentioned here again and interesting to have a good look at the method she proposed.