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It depends. There are Point-Of-Care systems already, usually for things like urinalysis as you mentioned. If they did have a small, accurate, fast (~10 minutes
by CptFribble 8y ago
It depends. There are Point-Of-Care systems already, usually for things like urinalysis as you mentioned. If they did have a small, accurate, fast (~10 minutes or less per test, definitely not 4 hours) new system that could do multiple tests on a single drop, then yes, putting those directly in doctor's offices and hospitals would be the right idea, as long as you can make the financials make sense for the doctors.
Really, there are already small systems for just about any test you might want to do, it's just that economies of scale for a big lab like LabCorp usually make it too comparatively expensive to run your own system, because you need to pay for the system and hire a licensed technologist to operate it. That's not just bureaucracy, either. Most current systems can have lots of weird problems that affect the results, and you need someone who understands both the medical relevance of the test (and normal/abnormal results), as well as some statistics, in order to know when the machine is operating correctly and when it's giving you subtly biased results and might need re-calibration or something.
In big cities like NYC, it's more expensive to ship the blood out of the city to LabCorp/Quest's big regional facilities, and the "big" labs inside the city are way smaller (so they cost more). So doctors are more likely to be able to swing operating their own system.
Also, some doctors charge way more than normal for their services, particularly IVF/fertility clinics. Those places always have their own machines (their clientele are also more demanding, and would expect results faster than you can get by sending out to LC/Quest).