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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

The embattled biotech firm Theranos has introduced a new blood testing product [theverge.com], as its CEO deflected [newyorker.com] criticism of the company's previous blood tests:

Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes made an appearance at a scientific convention today, but it wasn't to allay the many concerns about the company's previous blood tests, the results of which were thrown out [theverge.com] earlier this year. Holmes also chose not to address the federal criminal and civil investigations against her company, instead announcing a new Theranos product [statnews.com]: a blood-testing kit that could serve as the successor to its controversial Edison machines.

Speaking at the the annual meeting for the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, Holmes said the new machine — called the Theranos Sample Processing Unit, or "miniLab" — was the size of a computer printer, and will be able to run a battery of tests on just 160 microliters of blood taken from a pricked finger. She showed clinical data that detailed 11 tests miniLab can run on blood samples, including one for the Zika virus, but the company says that it can run up to 40 tests. A source told The Wall Street Journal [wsj.com] that so many tests could not be run on the same blood, and that patients would need to provide three or four samples.

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