Seems to me like this quote from the paper is not making a fair comparison. As far as I know, the main market that Theranos is targeting is outpatient / home testing. Yes, of course central labs in a hospital setting get simple and/or common tests back within a few hours--inpatient medicine involves a higher level of illness severity and thus a higher priority on lab values. I work with one of the major outpatient laboratory companies on a daily basis and I'll tell you that their basic results are almost always back within 24 hrs and stat labs are back within three hours of the runner picking them up. In fact, probably half of our wait time is from the pick-up schedule (late in the day) and had nothing to do with these "older" technologies taking too long.
That being said, this particular lab company provides horrible customer service and our nurses probably spend more than an hour on the phone with them every week trying to troubleshoot very simple situations. For this reason, I've been hopeful about Theranos' potential to bring some meaningful competition to the market. We'll see.
That being said, this particular lab company provides horrible customer service and our nurses probably spend more than an hour on the phone with them every week trying to troubleshoot very simple situations. For this reason, I've been hopeful about Theranos' potential to bring some meaningful competition to the market. We'll see.