A huge part of the costs of the healthcare system today are tests. Test that we all have to wait for, that are often inconclusive, that use very complex equipment, that cost a lot and that pay the Dr's well. All this is going to change.
Just as you now can tell immediately if you are pregnant, soon you will use a paper and tell if you have cancer. You will know very early and with 100% accuracy.
How?
All because of a 15 year old boy science genius. Story Here
In summary, all new and bad things in our bodies produce signature responses from our immune system. Called antigens, they are very specific and they can be found very very very early. Jack Andraka has developed a test that will find these signatures - the results are the same as for pregnancy testing. Easy to use and an immediate response.
This is going to change a lot about cancer.
- Cancers will be found very early and with few false positives - cuts the death rate in some cancers such as colo rectal that depend on early detection
- Much of the testing will be done by us - the consumer
- Huge costs will go away
Be sure however that the healthcare system will fight this. They will claim that we are not clever enough to do this. But the real reason will be that testing is a major part of their income. Labs will fight this for the same reason.
On the other side, single payers such as Canada's provinces, Medicare and HMO's will push on the other side.
In the end the new tests will win and so will we.
