Apparently Ms. Elizabeth Holmes is now a billionaire due to some medical test related inventions. Talk about an American success story: a college sophomore invents devices which have the potential to revolutionize the entire field of medical testing!
But not everyone agrees. In fact, some scientists are skeptical:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/scientists-skeptical-secret-blood-test-100000161.html
Being a skeptic who once ran a small medical laboratory, I decided to look at some of her patents. And now I agree with the skeptical scientists - there appears to be nothing in the patent documents which tells you exactly how the devices work (at least that's my impression).
If you want to check for yourself, look up Patent No. 8,283,155 @ http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html
It seems to me that before such devices could be licensed for medical use in the US they would have to be extensively tested to demonstrate their accuracy and repeatability using double-blind test methods. Assuming that to be the case, I reserve judgment on the value of these patents until a future date.
Someone, on the other hand, already has been willing to put up billions of dollars to finance this potentially disruptive technology. I guess that's how things work these days.
Hmmm ... I also guess that's one of the reasons why they are rich and I am not.
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