Theranos intros new 'fingerprick' testing tech despite its woes

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has introduced a 95-pound testing device called "miniLab" at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry meeting in Philadelphia. The controversial blood testing company, which promised results with just a fingerprick, has been in hot water ever since The Wall Street Journal published a series of articles detailing its flawed results and other issues. In fact, it voided its past test results and lost its contract with Walgreens over the past few months. Holmes was also banned from owning a lab for two years. That's why the convention's the attendees were expecting a presentation clarifying the science behind its fingerprick-testing technique, according to Bloomberg.

What they got instead was the announcement of a brand new device different from its old Edison machine. WSJ's sources said Theranos barely used Edison, because the results it produced weren't always accurate. But just like Edison, the miniLab was also designed to test for a variety of illnesses, including Zika, using just a drop of blood. Holmes said the machine is even capable of detecting additional strains of the Zika virus. Many attendees were obviously skeptical of the new machine -- "I certainly didn't see anything that lives up to the expansive claims they made," one pathologist told Bloomberg -- but the CEO said Theranos already submitted the new device to the FDA for approval.