Well, cheaper and easier testing is great for everyone, particular in environments that can't run expensive fully equipped pathology laboratories eg rural areas, developing nations, refugee camps etc.
But at the end of the day, we need better tests, not better ways of testing. Looking through their test menu, it's the same old diagnostic blood tests we've been using for the last 30 or even 50 years. Hopefully there is something revolutionary behind the hype. I don't think it will be consumerization - none of those listed tests is going to help early detection of anything by getting yourself tested at Walgreens while you're buying toothpaste. Similarly, most of the tests are only useful when applied in a well fleshed out diagnostic process that involves collecting data about symptoms and medical history to generate a prior probability of the disease. Otherwise the false positive rate is high, and the false negative rate difficult to deal with. The utility of serial monitoring as a marker of health is also far from proven, but is an interesting idea. At the moment though, if you go to your doctor and say your homocysteine levels are fluctuating strangely, they won't have a clue what to do about it...
I would also add that proving that a test can be used to detect a disease early, and that early detection leads to a measurable improvement in disease outcomes takes a very long time, a lot of patients and a lot of money. So if they have made some great advance in microfluidic chemoproteomics that can actually detect the early traces of a disease process then that would be amazing, but one must remain skeptical.
But at the end of the day, we need better tests, not better ways of testing. Looking through their test menu, it's the same old diagnostic blood tests we've been using for the last 30 or even 50 years. Hopefully there is something revolutionary behind the hype. I don't think it will be consumerization - none of those listed tests is going to help early detection of anything by getting yourself tested at Walgreens while you're buying toothpaste. Similarly, most of the tests are only useful when applied in a well fleshed out diagnostic process that involves collecting data about symptoms and medical history to generate a prior probability of the disease. Otherwise the false positive rate is high, and the false negative rate difficult to deal with. The utility of serial monitoring as a marker of health is also far from proven, but is an interesting idea. At the moment though, if you go to your doctor and say your homocysteine levels are fluctuating strangely, they won't have a clue what to do about it...
I would also add that proving that a test can be used to detect a disease early, and that early detection leads to a measurable improvement in disease outcomes takes a very long time, a lot of patients and a lot of money. So if they have made some great advance in microfluidic chemoproteomics that can actually detect the early traces of a disease process then that would be amazing, but one must remain skeptical.