像了解信用卡一样，这家公司可以让你更了解自己的身体

    在周三召开的《财富》（Fortune）最具影响力商界女性峰会（Most Powerful Women Summit）上，医学检测公司Theranos的创始人兼CEO伊莉莎白•霍尔姆斯表示，人们是时候更多了解自己的身体了，首先要从医学检测开始。

    她补充道：“我们对信用卡的了解都要多于对自己身体的了解。”

    《财富》杂志曾在今年早些时候报道过霍尔姆斯。她正在颠覆医疗行业实验室检测的现状。19岁时，她创办了Theranos公司，该公司开发的程序可以使用最少的血液样本进行全套医学实验室检测。不需要针头，没有麻烦，也没有压力。

    该公司设计的程序，通过合理化的端对端服务，使客户的数据更方便使用。霍尔姆斯说，客户来到Theranos的独立诊所，将听到舒缓的音乐，里面放有鱼缸和“许多竹子”。只要在指尖上扎一下，然后将几滴血存入非常小的容器中用于检测，霍尔姆斯称这种容器是“纳米容器”。之后，公司将通过智能手机应用或其他传统方法，将检测结果通知客户。

    霍尔姆斯表示，有客户形容整个过程是“有趣的”体验。Theranos的检测过程不像常见的医学检测那样，没有无菌针头，不需要漫长的等待，也无需重新预约，这正是其卖点所在。一切都设计得非常简便。

    她说道：“从根本上来说，要想解决医疗领域面临的挑战，必须依靠调动个人的积极性，使个人更加强大。”

    Theranos的商业模式核心是行为改变，霍尔姆斯相信，参与是走向知识的第一步，而知识将带来改变。

    此外，与传统的实验室检测相比，Theranos的检测成本非常低。公司按医疗补助计划报销比率的50%收费，甚至在有些情况下，公司的收费比标准医疗补助计划报销比率低90%。全细胞计数的收费为4美元。而据《医疗蓝皮书》（Healthcare Bluebook）统计，美国国家实验室检测公司的标准收费为45美元。

    这种低收费、客户友好型模式正在迅速扩张。近期，Theranos与沃尔格林公司（Walgreen）达成协议，公司将在全美8,100家沃尔格林店铺中设置诊所。这意味着，平均每一位美国人在5英里内便有一家Theranos设施。

    低廉的价格也在帮助公司走向国际市场，尤其是那些急需实惠价格，而且需要及时获得临床结果的地方。许多地方连仅仅10美元的结核病检测都难以承受，Theranos希望为那里的人们带去福音。

    霍尔姆斯说道：“能够进入这一领域，是我们目前工作的核心。” Theranos的使命是“找到获取生命信息的通道，从根本上延长人们的寿命。”(财富中文网)

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    It’s time for people to know more about their bodies, and that starts with medical testing, said Elizabeth Holmes, CEO and Founder of medical-testing company Theranos at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit on Wednesday.

    “We know more about our credit cards than we know about our bodies,” she added.

    Holmes, who Fortune profiled earlier this year, has been upending how the medical industry looks at laboratory testing. Theranos, the company she founded when she was 19 years old, developed a process to run the full scope of medical lab testing using only the smallest sampling of blood. There’s no needles, no hassle and no stress.

    The company has designed a new process that makes customer data more readily available with a streamlined, end-to-end service. Customers enter one of Theranos stand-alone clinics, where they are greeted with calming music, fish tanks and “lots of bamboo,” Holmes said. They have their finger pricked and droplets of blood are put in a very small container — what Holmes called a “nano-tainer” — for testing. Those results are then made available through a smartphone app, as well as other traditional methods.

    It’s a customer experience that some have described as “fun,” according to Holmes. The Theranos process is a far cry from the sterile needles, long waits and re-booked appointments that are common–and that’s the point. Everything has been engineered to be as easy and accessible.

    “Fundamentally, the answers to our challenges in healthcare relies in engaging and empowering the individual,” she said.

    The heart of Theranos’s business model is behavior change, and Holmes believes that engagement is the first step to knowledge that can bring that change.

    In addition, all of this costs only pennies on the dollar as compared to traditional lab testing. Theranos offers its tests at 50% of the total Medicaid reimbursement rate, and has begun dropping that price to more that 90% off the typical Medicaid reimbursement rate in certain cases. A complete blood cell count is $4. That’s a fraction of the standard $45 cost for a national lab testing company, according to the Healthcare Bluebook.

    This low-cost, customer-friendly model is expanding. Theranos recently signed a deal with Walgreen to deploy its clinics nationally across its 8,100 Walgreens stores. That would place a Theranos facility within 5 miles, on average, of every American.

    The low-cost pricing will also help the company push out internationally, where affordable and immediate clinical results are desperately needed. A $10 tuberculosis testing is too expensive in many places, and Theranos wants to make sure it’s accessible.

    “Being able to operate at that realm is at the core of what we’re doing,” said Holmes. Theranos’ mission is about getting “access to information that fundamentally means you don’t have to say goodbye too soon.”