Jane Hermansen, MT(ASCP), on What We Learned from the Promise of Theranos

By Hannah Crawford • November 7, 2019

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Jane Hermansen, Manager, Outreach and Network Development, is featured on the cover of October’s MedicalLab Management where she takes a good look at lessons to be learned from Theranos, the defunct purveyor of many a lofty but ultimately unfulfillable claim.

In health care innovation as in life, failure presents opportunity. Hermansen shares the aspects of Theranos that effectively drew a treasure map to the precise priorities of a new type of health care patient—the savvy, price-shopping consumer who expects increasing value from his or her investment.

Hermansen explains, “What we have learned about the health care consumer is that they require convenient access and want to know how much they will pay for services. Brand and reputation play a small role when selecting a provider and higher cost does not equate to a perception of higher quality.”

Theranos represented everything that’s important to consumers now: access and convenience, cost, quality, service, and reputation. And despite its spectacular extinction, are there are aspects of this mythical “unicorn” that we can create in real life?

Read “Creating a Patient-Centered Laboratory” to learn more.

Hannah Crawford

Hannah Crawford is content marketing manager at Mayo Clinic Laboratories. She focuses on telling stories about the impact of laboratory medicine for patients and health care organizations around the world. Hannah has worked at Mayo Clinic Laboratories since 2018.