6 ms·

I wonder if there's a way to democratize inexpensive health testing and see these trends faster? Imagine a world where you're testing your blood/sweat/saliva/vi

I wonder if there's a way to democratize inexpensive health testing and see these trends faster? Imagine a world where you're testing your blood/sweat/saliva/vitals daily and semi-anonymously sending the results to be analysed using statistical methods. A doctor can give you a one time use current diagnoses voucher to add into the system for serious diseases. The whole thing is voluntary. There's definitely some dystopian abuse potential, but in the US healthcare is already a disaster for a large portion of the population, and this could lessen that. Is it possible for something like this to be created?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
rjf72 8y ago
There's one general point that has to always be considered in these sort of ideas. Resources are not infinite. Of course you realize this, but I think we who come from the software world can fail to appreciate how severely restricting a problem this actually is. There are 325 million people in the US. Let's imagine a very high participation rate and just exclude infants and some outliers, just so see what would happen. So we'll call it 300 million. That's 300 million tests per day or about 110 billion per year. The cost there is already going to be extreme. Even if you can get the tests down to $10/person, which you probably cannot, that's more than a trillion dollars a year -- upwards of 5% of the GDP. But the bigger issue here is what money represents: resources. Machinery, maintenance, operation, even the strain on the transportation system would be intolerable. For instance think about the little kit you send over with your sample. I mean you'd think just getting it there would be negligible, but it'd be anything but. The USPS currently handles 20.2 million pieces of mail per hour. [1] Just handling these packages alone would increase the entire postal system's burden by more than 60%! Or even consider the simple packaging that needs to be produced and disposed of. How small of a kit can we get to ensure sterility, sufficient sample size, and transportation safety? Let's say 100 grams. That doesn't seem like that much, but again think about it at scale. That's 30 million kilograms. For some sort of scale, The Statue of Liberty weighs about 200,000 kilograms. So each day you're talking about 150 Statues of Liberty of packaging and material that needs to be manufactured, distributed, delivered, processed, and disposed. Big ideas in the physical world have quite tremendous barriers. --- As one interesting aside, imagine you took the market value for literally every single consumed good and service in the US, the sum total of money invested by businesses, and all government expenditure on top of it. And then you divided that equally among every man, woman, and child. How much would it be? It's interesting to compare expectation versus reality there. Conveniently what I described is really easy to measure - it's the GDP/capita. And it's less than $60,000. I always find that number quite bemusing when thinking about it contrasted against our economic ideals in various matters. [1] - https://facts.usps.com/one-day/ https://facts.usps.com/one-day/
- adamsea 8y ago
  Well, considering how the U.S. (where I live) spends about 1 trillion + on war or war-related stuff each year, and, considering all the people in the country with crappy jobs that can't pay the bills, seems like shifting even say $500 billion (plenty enough left to bomb people) to hire or train folks to solve these problems would be a good investment.
- LargoLasskhyfv 8y ago
  Don't be so pessimistic. Show some innovative thinking! What about "The Internet of Things" (down there)? Imagine something like these japanese super potties with integrated bidet function. Make it smart with all sorts of sensors which ANALyze urine, stool and for good measure add an anal probe. Couple this with something from Apple like iHealth and call it iShit, connect it to some insurer and everyone's a winner! Almost instant feedback from INPUT to OUTPUT, even the ability to prove how badly something on your daily commute has influenced some level of something because of course you have constant gps-coverage of your whereabouts, like everybody else too? Think Big Data! CACC™ = comfortably autoclaim compensation /me vanishes whinnying into the off... (sorry, for some reason i really couldn't resist) edit:spelling/wording/trademarking
drharby 8y ago
If only there were a medical device company capable or cheap blood test processing to disrupt and innovate this field:^)
- caseymarquis 8y ago
  Is that the actual constraint on the system though? Are existing technologies not up to the task? Or are we failing to build a system like this with existing technology even though it's possible. Would a robotic assembly line with existing medical testing technologies be possible?
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    A lot of the constraints are social ("political"). Historically, if you got VD -- back when it was called that -- they took the names of all your recent sex partners, tracked them down and notified them and treated them. It was a system that was fairly effective. Then AIDS came along and was associated with homosexuality and IV drug use. For understandable reasons, such people didn't want to name names. So the mantra became "we need better drugs." That general line of reasoning seems to be a trend. We can't do x, y or z because reasons, and then we don't actually have an answer, basically. Hopefully, that will change.
  - cheesymuffin 8y ago
    He's making a funny joke about Theranos. That said most routine tests are pretty cheap. A stool culture with isolation where I am is $135 if you're paying cash at the lab. A lipid panel was well under $50. It's just that you'd need to see a gastroenterologist, pay for her services, hope that she gives you a referral, and see a new one if not. This drives the price in time and money.
    - dwighttk 8y ago
      A- that's still quite a bit of money B- The proposal was to get thousands (millions?) of volunteers to do these tests regularly and speculatively, price won't stay the same
rum3 8y ago
The US health care system is dystopian. These are just challenges that are not possible to ignore.
dwighttk 8y ago
have to weigh your benefits against the ballooning number of false positives and negatives.
agumonkey 8y ago
I so wish states were massive scale testing device machines/manufacturer. ps: a lot of systemic issues are due to lack of information and trust. To exemplify, there was a story about people electricity consumption. Those with a counter in the basement used a lot more than those with the counter near the front door.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Counter? Electricity meter?
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    Yeah sorry, very lazy french loan~

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

rjf72 8y ago

There's one general point that has to always be considered in these sort of ideas. Resources are not infinite. Of course you realize this, but I think we who come from the software world can fail to appreciate how severely restricting a problem this actually is. There are 325 million people in the US. Let's imagine a very high participation rate and just exclude infants and some outliers, just so see what would happen. So we'll call it 300 million. That's 300 million tests per day or about 110 billion per year. The cost there is already going to be extreme. Even if you can get the tests down to $10/person, which you probably cannot, that's more than a trillion dollars a year -- upwards of 5% of the GDP. But the bigger issue here is what money represents: resources. Machinery, maintenance, operation, even the strain on the transportation system would be intolerable. For instance think about the little kit you send over with your sample. I mean you'd think just getting it there would be negligible, but it'd be anything but. The USPS currently handles 20.2 million pieces of mail per hour. [1] Just handling these packages alone would increase the entire postal system's burden by more than 60%! Or even consider the simple packaging that needs to be produced and disposed of. How small of a kit can we get to ensure sterility, sufficient sample size, and transportation safety? Let's say 100 grams. That doesn't seem like that much, but again think about it at scale. That's 30 million kilograms. For some sort of scale, The Statue of Liberty weighs about 200,000 kilograms. So each day you're talking about 150 Statues of Liberty of packaging and material that needs to be manufactured, distributed, delivered, processed, and disposed. Big ideas in the physical world have quite tremendous barriers. --- As one interesting aside, imagine you took the market value for literally every single consumed good and service in the US, the sum total of money invested by businesses, and all government expenditure on top of it. And then you divided that equally among every man, woman, and child. How much would it be? It's interesting to compare expectation versus reality there. Conveniently what I described is really easy to measure - it's the GDP/capita. And it's less than $60,000. I always find that number quite bemusing when thinking about it contrasted against our economic ideals in various matters. [1] - https://facts.usps.com/one-day/ https://facts.usps.com/one-day/

adamsea 8y ago
Well, considering how the U.S. (where I live) spends about 1 trillion + on war or war-related stuff each year, and, considering all the people in the country with crappy jobs that can't pay the bills, seems like shifting even say $500 billion (plenty enough left to bomb people) to hire or train folks to solve these problems would be a good investment.
LargoLasskhyfv 8y ago
Don't be so pessimistic. Show some innovative thinking! What about "The Internet of Things" (down there)? Imagine something like these japanese super potties with integrated bidet function. Make it smart with all sorts of sensors which ANALyze urine, stool and for good measure add an anal probe. Couple this with something from Apple like iHealth and call it iShit, connect it to some insurer and everyone's a winner! Almost instant feedback from INPUT to OUTPUT, even the ability to prove how badly something on your daily commute has influenced some level of something because of course you have constant gps-coverage of your whereabouts, like everybody else too? Think Big Data! CACC™ = comfortably autoclaim compensation /me vanishes whinnying into the off... (sorry, for some reason i really couldn't resist) edit:spelling/wording/trademarking

drharby 8y ago

If only there were a medical device company capable or cheap blood test processing to disrupt and innovate this field:^)

caseymarquis 8y ago
Is that the actual constraint on the system though? Are existing technologies not up to the task? Or are we failing to build a system like this with existing technology even though it's possible. Would a robotic assembly line with existing medical testing technologies be possible?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  A lot of the constraints are social ("political"). Historically, if you got VD -- back when it was called that -- they took the names of all your recent sex partners, tracked them down and notified them and treated them. It was a system that was fairly effective. Then AIDS came along and was associated with homosexuality and IV drug use. For understandable reasons, such people didn't want to name names. So the mantra became "we need better drugs." That general line of reasoning seems to be a trend. We can't do x, y or z because reasons, and then we don't actually have an answer, basically. Hopefully, that will change.
- cheesymuffin 8y ago
  He's making a funny joke about Theranos. That said most routine tests are pretty cheap. A stool culture with isolation where I am is $135 if you're paying cash at the lab. A lipid panel was well under $50. It's just that you'd need to see a gastroenterologist, pay for her services, hope that she gives you a referral, and see a new one if not. This drives the price in time and money.
  - dwighttk 8y ago
    A- that's still quite a bit of money B- The proposal was to get thousands (millions?) of volunteers to do these tests regularly and speculatively, price won't stay the same

rum3 8y ago

The US health care system is dystopian. These are just challenges that are not possible to ignore.

dwighttk 8y ago

have to weigh your benefits against the ballooning number of false positives and negatives.

agumonkey 8y ago

I so wish states were massive scale testing device machines/manufacturer. ps: a lot of systemic issues are due to lack of information and trust. To exemplify, there was a story about people electricity consumption. Those with a counter in the basement used a lot more than those with the counter near the front door.

dredmorbius 8y ago
Counter? Electricity meter?
- agumonkey 8y ago
  Yeah sorry, very lazy french loan~