The idea for a single finger-prick blood test seems really ideal for diagnostics, but bioengineers at Rice University have shown in a new study that it really isn’t that simple. After taking multiple simple tests, they observed that the samples weren’t identical, specifically with basic health measures like hemoglobin, white blood cell counts and platelet counts.
The study, which was published in The American Journal of Clinical Pathology, was led by Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the director of Rice 360°: Institute for Global Health Technologies. They found that when compared to the normal blood draw from a vein in the arm, they had to get six to nine blood drops for an accurate, consistent reading.
Different companies are investing in a single finger-prick solution, especially for use in poor countries and for those who might not have easily accessible veins. But this shows that it might not actually be reasonable to have fully accurate results using this method.
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What does this mean for companies like Theranos that are completely banking on this prospect (despite other approval issues)? This study suggests that these methods probably won’t be entirely successful for diagnosis, and not just because the technology isn’t there – mostly because the quantity simply won’t work.
“If you’re going to take a fingerprick stick to get your measures, you need to be aware that you’re sacrificing some accuracy,” Meaghan Bond, the Rice bioengineering student who did the study with Dr. Richards-Kortum, told The New York Times.
