Elizabeth Holmes Wants You to Have Control of Your Health Info
Holmes credits her parents with fueling her ambition. When she was about seven, she showed them drawings for a time machine; rather than dismissing her, they regularly asked how the project was going. Not all of her peers had that kind of support, she knew: "My brother would get engineering Lego sets as a kid, and my friends would get Barbie dolls," she says. "I did get the Barbies and a lot of Legos." It was a beloved uncle, with whom Holmes spent summers and holidays, who was an inspiration for Theranos. Diagnosed with skin cancer that quickly spread to his brain and bones, he died before Holmes was able to say goodbye. She wondered, What if an ordinary blood test could have caught the disease earlier? "My wish is that no person has to go through what it means to have to say, 'If only I had known sooner,'" she says.
So for the past 12 years, her mission—and make no mistake, it is a mission—has been to democratize access to potentially lifesaving lab testing by making it painless, accessible, and affordable. (She estimates that 40 percent of patients don't get the blood tests they are prescribed because those tests can be frightening, inconvenient, and expensive.) She and her team were in "stealth mode" for 10 years, building the technology in fits and starts. "We sat down and said, 'OK, we are going to fail 10,000 times on this—figure out how to get it to work the 10,001st.'" Some argue she may not have nailed it yet; just as Glamour went to press in mid-October, a piece in The Wall Street Journal cited former employees' claims raising doubts about the accuracy of Theranos' tests. Holmes strongly refutes the charges. But she has never let critics deter her: "I think every bad thing you could possibly experience in trying to do something like this, we have experienced," she says. "But we know why we are doing it—people are counting on us because of what [this technology] means to a cancer patient, what it means to someone who has no ability to afford health care. That keeps you going in an incredible way."
So she's continuing to forge ahead. Next up, her partnership with Walgreens; since 2013 they have opened Theranos Wellness Centers in Arizona and California, where patients can get more than 250 tests—everything from fertility workups to screenings for herpes—many for less than $10. "We want to perfect the model in Arizona [so we can] realize the highest quality standards" and set up centers nationwide, she says. Notes Sanjay Gupta, M.D., associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, "The potential impact is enormous. It could change the way we test blood in the U.S. certainly, but even more so around the world.... I think this could help people take control of their own health care."
And that is Holmes' endgame—not just to create new technology, but to create change. This year she worked with Arizona legislators to help pass a groundbreaking law allowing consumers direct access to blood tests without a prescription. "The only way we can shift our health care system is if individuals begin to understand they have a basic right to their own health information," says Holmes. Telling them they can't, she explains, "is like saying to women, 'You don't have the right to vote because you're not intelligent enough to make that decision.' If you enfranchise people, and make the information understandable, they will engage."
HER WORDS TO LIVE BY: "Pursue whatever it is that you are so passionate about that you don't want to stop doing it."
*Donna Fenn is a journalist who covers entrepreneurship.*Editor's note: After Glamour went to press, the FDA released documents (see here and here) based on a site visit to Theranos stating that the company's nanotainer (the device used to collect finger-prick blood samples) is an "uncleared medical device" and also alleging poor handling of customer complaints. Some people who have had their blood tested have also come forward to say their results with Theranos were much different than with testing at more traditional medical centers. Theranos has stopped using its nanotainer device except for its FDA-approved herpes test; in a statement, Theranos said that the company has corrected any problems the FDA observed within seven days of the site visit and that it is "currently waiting for clearance" from the FDA until it resumes using the device for testing.
