Theranos' goals were always fishy. The fact of the matter is that their vaunted "one drop of blood" technology is a smokescreen, as in reality almost all clinic

Theranos' goals were always fishy. The fact of the matter is that their vaunted "one drop of blood" technology is a smokescreen, as in reality almost all clinical blood tests use a very small amount of material for the actual test (a few micro-litres). The reason why larger quantities of blood are routinely collected pertains not to the quantity used in the actual biochemical assay, but to the number of tests that may be carried out, and the greater ease of handling slightly larger quantities of sample than Theranos aims (aimed?) to handle. That is for their scientific model. Their business model was based mostly on enabling blood to collected without the need for a qualified person (e.g. a phlebotomist or nurse). This they could do because the amount of blood collected, and the method of collection, circumvented existing legislation. However, if it turns out that this method of collection doesn't "scale" then it too is a wash. Their saving grace might be if they can show that they can indeed perform assays on non-professionally collected blood to FDA-level standards. But that remains to be shown.