5 ms·

I am the only person who thinks the entire idea of Theranos is nuts? It's far more painful to take blood from a finger than from the MCV in your cubital fossa (

by et2o 11y ago

I am the only person who thinks the entire idea of Theranos is nuts? It's far more painful to take blood from a finger than from the MCV in your cubital fossa (arm). The fingertips are some of the most highly innervated structures in our body (probably second to the sex organs). Then you have to go around touching things all day with a band-aid on your fingertips, while you would immediately forget about the band-aid on your arm.

0xffff2 11y ago
The pain associated with a finger prick is basically constant. The pain associated with a veinous blood draw depends heavily on the patient and the skill of the phlebotomist. I can see how someone with hard to locate veins and one or two bad experiences would prefer the finger prick.
- mjevans 11y ago
  I would think that patients would probably prefer a /choice/ in that matter. Particularly those of us who have easier to draw from arm veins or those of us who mostly work with their fingertips (not just those operating keyboards; many professionals fit this category).
yourapostasy 11y ago
The pain in fingertips is usually associated with a blood draw from the pad of the fingertip. If you prick the side of the fingertip, the pain is greatly lessened for most people. YMMV, but generally true.
mchahn 11y ago
> I am the only person who thinks the entire idea of Theranos is nuts? Were personal computers replacing mainframes nuts? > It's far more painful to take blood from a finger than from the MCV in your cubital fossa (arm). Why didn't you just call it an arm? > Then you have to go around touching things all day with a band-aid on your fingertips, I've never had a band-aid for a finger-prick and do them constantly for checking blood sugar. Doctors never did it either.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  > Were personal computers replacing mainframes nuts? Personal computers never replaced mainframes. Personal computers replaced minicomputers and workstations. The difference is meaningful, even in this context: Minicomputers and workstations were high-end systems dedicated to things like relatively small-scale file storage, graphics processing, network tasks (servers, routers), and other workloads which required neither high throughput nor long up-times. They mainly required more RAM, CPU, and, sometimes, specialized hardware than it was feasible to put on a home system of the era. Mainframes, on the other hand, had become specialized as high-throughput high-availability systems, running large databases and supporting dozens to hundreds of users at a time, for years on end. They'd grown entire specialized architectures dedicated to handling that kind of workload, and were only getting moreso as time went on. My point is, if Theranos is the PC, it's only going to replace some aspects of the market it's moving into, and, from this article, it might not even do that. It's just too difficult to play catch-up with the extremely specialized realms, even if you have technology which is an 80% solution for 90% of the problems.
- et2o 11y ago
  I was being more specific in case someone pedantic would reply to me. Oh...
chetanahuja 11y ago
The main (claimed) innovation of Theranos was not just about the location of the blood draw, it's about quantity. If you could really replace 10's of mls blood draws from the arm with a few drops (< 1 ml) drawn from the fingertip with no loss of clinically usable information, it would actually be a major breakthrough. There are distressingly large number of patients in hospitals requiring once a day (or even more frequent) blood draws to maintain correct treatment. The volume of blood and availability of veins and pain threshold can become actual, serious problems very quickly. This is doubly true in children. If such tests were somehow found, they'll be noble-prize worthy scientific breakthroughs. Somehow Theranos is not giving off that vibe sadly.
- erroneousfunk 11y ago
  My mom was extremely sick with an autoimmune disorder about 10 years ago. She went to the hospital frequently (both inpatient, outpatient, and for scheduled appointments) constant blood draws -- a dozen vials at a time. The nurse once joked that she wish she had some juice and cookies to to her. Cheaper, more frequent testing on smaller volumes of blood would be fantastic.

by et2o 11y ago

0xffff2 11y ago

The pain associated with a finger prick is basically constant. The pain associated with a veinous blood draw depends heavily on the patient and the skill of the phlebotomist. I can see how someone with hard to locate veins and one or two bad experiences would prefer the finger prick.

mjevans 11y ago
I would think that patients would probably prefer a /choice/ in that matter. Particularly those of us who have easier to draw from arm veins or those of us who mostly work with their fingertips (not just those operating keyboards; many professionals fit this category).

yourapostasy 11y ago

The pain in fingertips is usually associated with a blood draw from the pad of the fingertip. If you prick the side of the fingertip, the pain is greatly lessened for most people. YMMV, but generally true.

mchahn 11y ago

> I am the only person who thinks the entire idea of Theranos is nuts? Were personal computers replacing mainframes nuts? > It's far more painful to take blood from a finger than from the MCV in your cubital fossa (arm). Why didn't you just call it an arm? > Then you have to go around touching things all day with a band-aid on your fingertips, I've never had a band-aid for a finger-prick and do them constantly for checking blood sugar. Doctors never did it either.

cbd1984 11y ago
> Were personal computers replacing mainframes nuts? Personal computers never replaced mainframes. Personal computers replaced minicomputers and workstations. The difference is meaningful, even in this context: Minicomputers and workstations were high-end systems dedicated to things like relatively small-scale file storage, graphics processing, network tasks (servers, routers), and other workloads which required neither high throughput nor long up-times. They mainly required more RAM, CPU, and, sometimes, specialized hardware than it was feasible to put on a home system of the era. Mainframes, on the other hand, had become specialized as high-throughput high-availability systems, running large databases and supporting dozens to hundreds of users at a time, for years on end. They'd grown entire specialized architectures dedicated to handling that kind of workload, and were only getting moreso as time went on. My point is, if Theranos is the PC, it's only going to replace some aspects of the market it's moving into, and, from this article, it might not even do that. It's just too difficult to play catch-up with the extremely specialized realms, even if you have technology which is an 80% solution for 90% of the problems.
et2o 11y ago
I was being more specific in case someone pedantic would reply to me. Oh...

chetanahuja 11y ago

The main (claimed) innovation of Theranos was not just about the location of the blood draw, it's about quantity. If you could really replace 10's of mls blood draws from the arm with a few drops (< 1 ml) drawn from the fingertip with no loss of clinically usable information, it would actually be a major breakthrough. There are distressingly large number of patients in hospitals requiring once a day (or even more frequent) blood draws to maintain correct treatment. The volume of blood and availability of veins and pain threshold can become actual, serious problems very quickly. This is doubly true in children. If such tests were somehow found, they'll be noble-prize worthy scientific breakthroughs. Somehow Theranos is not giving off that vibe sadly.

erroneousfunk 11y ago
My mom was extremely sick with an autoimmune disorder about 10 years ago. She went to the hospital frequently (both inpatient, outpatient, and for scheduled appointments) constant blood draws -- a dozen vials at a time. The nurse once joked that she wish she had some juice and cookies to to her. Cheaper, more frequent testing on smaller volumes of blood would be fantastic.