As you may have heard, the founder of Theranos has been banned from running a medical lab for two years, and her company is in the dumpster. You can read about it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/business/theranos-elizabeth-holmes-ban.html
In a former life, I ran a small medical lab back in the day when most tests were done by hand. I was as accurate as I could be.
I looked at Ms. Holmes patents and found something very interesting - nowhere do they describe exactly how her devices are supposed to work. Why is that significant?
I always thought that to patent a device you had to present a working prototype for evaluation. That is not the case.
My brother, a professor who is a pharmaceutical industry consultant, has confirmed that the feds are granting patents for concepts or ideas, even ones that don't work now but might work some day. Apparently this may have been the source of the woes over at Theranos - they had a great concept but for some reason just could not get it to work.
Oh well, live and learn:
https://youtu.be/GFW-WfuX2Dk
No comments:
Post a Comment