Thanks for this. This is a great story but one of the type that is prone to being overhyped by writers whose angle is "man bites dog." As another commenter pointed out, the test is still very preliminary:

http://www.pancan.org/section_research/strategic_research_pr...

Whether or not the test is a smashing success is not the only point of inspiration. I think the field of medicine is extremely prone to disruption by clever, process-focused laymen, whether they are 15 or 30-years of age. The field of medicine is filled with brilliant people, but it's also held back by institutional tradition and authority, i.e. "that's just the way things are done."

Frequent readers of HN are probably familiar with Atul Gawande's article on the checklist, in which hospitals who mandated that surgeons and nurses follow a simple list of steps (literally, as simple as "wash your hands") were able to reduce the rate of needless post-surgical infections to zero. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_...

I believe Merck's first big drug came from reading a research paper that had apparently been overlooked. In a book I've been reading about how companies develop drugs, a veteran of the industry wrote about how a potential multi-billion dollar drug was almost shelved because the company's analysts had forgotten to remove dummy data from their test-analysis routines...and that this kind of thing happens all the time, apparently.

And of course, most people are pretty familiar with the calcified information-systems of their doctors' offices. Those things remain in place because that's how they've been done in the past, by many other brilliant people, so why re-examine them?*

(to be fair, medical information systems are also hindered by medical privacy laws governing the copying/distribution of patient data)

Edit: Just after I posted this, I came across this NYT article about a boy who went to the hospital after cutting his arm diving for a basketball and died from infection-related complications. The upshot:

> In a statement, the hospital said that emergency physicians and nurses would be “immediately notified of certain lab results suggestive of serious infection, such as elevated band counts.” Rory Staunton’s bands, or a type of white blood cell, were nearly five times as high as a normal level.

> The hospital has developed a new checklist to ensure that a doctor and nurse have conducted “a final review of all critical lab results and patient vital signs” before a patient leaves, Lisa Greiner, a spokeswoman, said in the statement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/nyregion/after-rory-staunt...