The 10b valuation is nuts. That's more than LabCorp or Quest, two companies that already do lab actual lab tests on real instruments for hundreds of millions of people. Yes, it looks like you can get results online from Theranos, but you can do this for lots of labs, as well. Theranos' app is undoubtedly slicker...Silicon Valley can afford better software people than labs can. As for improvements in labs today.... Our financial structure is crazy. Fee for service drives more testing, when in fact the main problem in US medicine right now is that we do too much testing (overall...there are still some areas where we need to do more). The solution to test overutilization is not making tests cheaper so folks can get more tests at Walgreens. One answer could be the current ACO model (or it's logical extension, single payer or socialized medicine) in which the goal of care is the health of the patient, not the profit. Once hospitals and labs are payed by the person, not by the test, we're gonna find lots of surprising ways to stop letting folks get tests they don't need, since the answers to those tests will often be misleading, require expensive follow up, etc... To the folks on this discussion who think that they would prefer to be able to go and get frequent tests (or, god forbid, get frequent Lyme serologies, which borders on outright quackery), I would say this: you can't handle the truth. Really. There is a reason why we put doctors as gatekeepers between patients and medical services like MRIs, lab tests, and chemotherapy. It's called Bayes Theorem (it's on Wikipedia). If it's exceedingly unlikely that something is wrong with you before you get a test, then it's still exceedingly unlikely you have the condition even when you get a positive test for it. This breaks down when the doctor does a bad job, since it's the doctor's job to select tests only in those with higher pretest probabilities, but it is an inescapable issue. I realize also that suggesting that laypeople are too ignorant to take their own health into their own hands sounds not even a little elitist, but it is sorta true. One of the main concerns for healthy people should be staying OUT of the medical care system, because we hurt people sometimes, even when we help them. The lab is a gateway to the medical care system, so unless you want to go through the gate, stay away.