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She's America's youngest female billionaire - and a dropout
By Rachel Crane @CNNTech October 16, 2014: 3:57 PM ET
America's youngest self-made female billionaire is 30 years old and a
college dropout. The company she founded has the potential to change health
care for millions of Americans.
Elizabeth Holmes left Stanford University at 19 with a plan to start her own
company. For money, she cashed out the funds her parents had saved for
tuition. Now, she counts billionaire Larry Ellison as an investor and has
former secretaries of state on her board.
"I think a lot of young people have incredible ideas and incredible insights
, but sometimes they wait before they go give their life to something," she
said. "What I did was just to start a little earlier."
Holmes, through her company Theranos, has taken on the $76 billion
laboratory-diagnostic industry as her target. It's an industry that was just
waiting to be disrupted, since blood testing has not changed since the
modern clinical lab emerged in the 1960s.
Her idea: No more vials. No more tourniquets. Just a pinprick of blood
gathered in a container smaller than a dime. And up to 70 lab tests can be
run on one drop of blood in less time than traditional tests.
Holmes thinks that ease of testing will make people more likely to go
through with blood tests and help with earlier detection of illness,
something she's passionate about. Her father, Christian Holmes IV, has spent
a career working in humanitarian assistance, including several executive
positions with USAID.
"My father worked in disaster relief and so I grew up in a house that had
pictures of all these little children in really tough parts of the world,"
she said. "I was absolutely convinced that was what I was going to do. Then
when I started realizing that a company could be a vehicle for having very
direct impact over a change that you are trying to make, I started thinking
about the concept of what could I build that could impact a lot of peoples'
lives?"
blood billionaire Elizabeth Holmes owns 50% of her company, Theranos.
The solution she's built is the Theranos Wellness Center, which has calming
music, glossy magazines and offers a blood test with a relatively painless
prick. Holmes' ultimate goal is to have one center within five miles of any
American (or one mile for folks in big cities).
Theranos teamed up with Walgreens pharmacies to help make that happen, and
the centers are built within existing Walgreens stores.
There are currently centers in California and Arizona, with plans for a
gradual rollout into 8,200 neighborhood Walgreens across the country.
"It's bringing the testing closer to where people live and also changing the
hours of operation, so that on a weekend or late at night you can get
access to these tests. You don't have to leave work, leave your job during
the day," Holmes said.
Holmes is also a proponent of transparency in health care, so Theranos lists
the price of all of its nearly 1,000 tests on its website. Often the costs
are a fraction of what they would be through standard reimbursement rates.
theranos lab The Theranos labs are shrouded in secrecy.
According to American Clinical Laboratory Association, more than 7 billion
lab tests are performed in the U.S. annually and lab results dictate 80% of
clinical decisions. Far too often, the cost of laboratory tests and the fear
of having a needle jabbed into one's arm deters patients from getting the
necessary tests.
"Forty to sixty percent of Americans today are not compliant with even the
basic tests that their physicians give them when they do see them, because
often they can't afford it, or they are scared of needles," Holmes said.
She feels the same way about needles.
"I really believe that if we were from another planet and we sat down to put
our heads together on torture experiments, the concept of sticking a needle
into someone and sucking their blood out would probably qualify as a pretty
good one," she said.
By Rachel Crane @CNNTech October 16, 2014: 3:57 PM ET
America's youngest self-made female billionaire is 30 years old and a
college dropout. The company she founded has the potential to change health
care for millions of Americans.
Elizabeth Holmes left Stanford University at 19 with a plan to start her own
company. For money, she cashed out the funds her parents had saved for
tuition. Now, she counts billionaire Larry Ellison as an investor and has
former secretaries of state on her board.
"I think a lot of young people have incredible ideas and incredible insights
, but sometimes they wait before they go give their life to something," she
said. "What I did was just to start a little earlier."
Holmes, through her company Theranos, has taken on the $76 billion
laboratory-diagnostic industry as her target. It's an industry that was just
waiting to be disrupted, since blood testing has not changed since the
modern clinical lab emerged in the 1960s.
Her idea: No more vials. No more tourniquets. Just a pinprick of blood
gathered in a container smaller than a dime. And up to 70 lab tests can be
run on one drop of blood in less time than traditional tests.
Holmes thinks that ease of testing will make people more likely to go
through with blood tests and help with earlier detection of illness,
something she's passionate about. Her father, Christian Holmes IV, has spent
a career working in humanitarian assistance, including several executive
positions with USAID.
"My father worked in disaster relief and so I grew up in a house that had
pictures of all these little children in really tough parts of the world,"
she said. "I was absolutely convinced that was what I was going to do. Then
when I started realizing that a company could be a vehicle for having very
direct impact over a change that you are trying to make, I started thinking
about the concept of what could I build that could impact a lot of peoples'
lives?"
blood billionaire Elizabeth Holmes owns 50% of her company, Theranos.
The solution she's built is the Theranos Wellness Center, which has calming
music, glossy magazines and offers a blood test with a relatively painless
prick. Holmes' ultimate goal is to have one center within five miles of any
American (or one mile for folks in big cities).
Theranos teamed up with Walgreens pharmacies to help make that happen, and
the centers are built within existing Walgreens stores.
There are currently centers in California and Arizona, with plans for a
gradual rollout into 8,200 neighborhood Walgreens across the country.
"It's bringing the testing closer to where people live and also changing the
hours of operation, so that on a weekend or late at night you can get
access to these tests. You don't have to leave work, leave your job during
the day," Holmes said.
Holmes is also a proponent of transparency in health care, so Theranos lists
the price of all of its nearly 1,000 tests on its website. Often the costs
are a fraction of what they would be through standard reimbursement rates.
theranos lab The Theranos labs are shrouded in secrecy.
According to American Clinical Laboratory Association, more than 7 billion
lab tests are performed in the U.S. annually and lab results dictate 80% of
clinical decisions. Far too often, the cost of laboratory tests and the fear
of having a needle jabbed into one's arm deters patients from getting the
necessary tests.
"Forty to sixty percent of Americans today are not compliant with even the
basic tests that their physicians give them when they do see them, because
often they can't afford it, or they are scared of needles," Holmes said.
She feels the same way about needles.
"I really believe that if we were from another planet and we sat down to put
our heads together on torture experiments, the concept of sticking a needle
into someone and sucking their blood out would probably qualify as a pretty
good one," she said.
