[adevine]

In the beginning, the secret sauce of Uber was still its technology - being able to order a car on your phone, seeing where the nearby drivers are, not having to pull out cash or a credit card at the end. This made the experience much better than ordering a cab.

[codezero]

Yes I get this. I am wondering how Theranos is failing to take advantage of other technologies, despite using existing ones, just like Uber did. What exactly has Theranos failed to deliver?

[adevine]

Their "nanotainer". Theranos claimed they could do all sorts of blood tests with just a finger prick and a few drops of blood. The original WSJ article found they were doing normal venous draws, performing the tests on other companies' machines.

[codezero]

OK, did they deliver the results that were expected of the tests? Is the main issue that they said, finger prick, but, it didn't take a finger prick? That's a serious main issue, but I'm just trying to determine if that is the main point of contention. Also, that doing such a draw is exactly what incumbents do. Thanks for clearing this up.

[Frondo]

It really does seem like you're trolling here, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt:

Theranos, the company, has claimed to be building an amazing new testing system. They're not just about getting blood test centers set up in grocery stores, they're very specifically all about a new technology that gives consumers access to a lot of tests all at once, from a pin-prick blood sample. Not an old-style blood sample from a vein, and not this piecemeal "we mostly use the current equipment, but then we can also use our own" weirdness.

The business was "fancy new tech, disrupting health care," not "we'll take blood from your vein in a grocery store".

If you're going to try and say, well, ok, but maybe they're just pivoting to using standard equipment but now it's in a grocery store, I guess you could say that...