Who Got There: the 2013 vision, scored company by company

4. Devices that have quietly done it for decades (narrow menus)

These existed before, during and after Theranos. Each one proves a piece of the vision at scale.

Abbott i-STAT (Imants Lauks, founded 1983 as Integrated Ionics; first product 1992; Abbott acquired 2003). Handheld; single-use cartridges with microfabricated thin-film biosensors; 17 µL (troponin I, CK-MB, BNP, hCG) to 65 to 95 µL (chemistry and blood gas panels); 2 to 10 minutes. Menu: sodium, potassium, chloride, ionized calcium, glucose, lactate, creatinine, BUN, hematocrit, TCO2, pH, pCO2, pO2, troponin I, BNP, CK-MB, hCG, PT/INR, ACT. The CHEM8+ cartridge is CLIA-waived on venous lithium-heparin blood. This is the oldest and most successful "lab in your hand," used in emergency departments, ambulances and the military. Lauks later founded Epocal (the epoc analyzer, now Siemens) and in 2019 Questat.

Abbott Piccolo Xpress (Abaxis; founded April 1989 by Gary Ostoich "to develop a machine capable of analyzing blood and providing doctors with readings on 80 tests within a few minutes"; VetScan 1994; Piccolo 1995; Zoetis bought Abaxis for $2.0 billion in July 2018). A self-contained 8 cm reagent disc with dry reagent beads and diluent; 100 µL of lithium-heparin whole blood, plasma or serum; the disc separates plasma by centrifugation and runs up to 14 analytes per panel in about 12 minutes; 31 analytes across 16 discs, 11 of them CLIA-waived on whole blood; onboard iQC. Abaxis's fiscal 2018 revenue was $244.7 million, 78 percent consumables, 83 percent veterinary; Piccolo for humans was about $38.6 million. The founding mission was a Theranos-shaped vision and the company delivered a narrower, honest version of it over 29 years, then exited for $2 billion.

Abbott Cholestech LDX (Cholestech, then Alere, then Abbott). 40 µL fingerstick; total cholesterol, HDL, triglycerides, calculated LDL, glucose, and an ALT/AST cassette; about 5 minutes; CLIA-waived; CDC lipid-standardization certified; used in thousands of physician offices, hospitals and wellness programs. The pharmacy fingerstick lipid panel Theranos promised in 2013 was already a routine product.

HemoCue (Ängelholm, Sweden, 1982; Quest bought it for about $420 million in 2007; sold to Danaher's Radiometer for about $300 million in 2013). Hemoglobin from a fingerstick in under a minute via a microcuvette; the global standard in blood banks and clinics. HemoCue WBC DIFF: 10 µL fingerstick, white cell count and 5-part differential in under 5 minutes using imaging; moderate complexity; used for clozapine monitoring and pediatrics, though fingerstick samples produce more flags and reruns.

Siemens DCA Vantage. 1 µL fingerstick HbA1c in 6 minutes, CLIA-waived, NGSP and IFCC certified; also urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio. Abbott Afinion 2. HbA1c from 1.5 µL in 3 minutes (CLIA-waived), plus lipid panel, CRP and ACR cartridges (moderate complexity in the US); about $4,700 for the analyzer.

Roche cobas b 101. One fingerstick, three disc tests: HbA1c (2 µL), lipid panel (19 µL), CRP (12 µL); 4 to 6 minutes per test, two tests within a 15-minute workflow; no calibration or maintenance; roughly €1,700 to £4,000 for the instrument, about €5.75 per HbA1c disc. Standard equipment in European primary care.

Aidian QuikRead go (formerly Orion Diagnostica, Finland). CRP, CRP plus hemoglobin, HbA1c, strep A, fecal hemoglobin; CRP from a fingerstick in 2 minutes with automatic hematocrit correction; more than 60,000 instruments placed in over 60 countries; the backbone of Nordic antibiotic stewardship in primary care; a Swedish list price near SEK 12,900 for the instrument and about SEK 40 per CRP test.

Eurolyser CUBE / CUBE-S (Austria). 2.4 kg; CRP (5 µL), hsCRP (20 µL), HbA1c (10 µL), PT/INR, D-dimer, ferritin, troponin I, PSA, cystatin C, lipoprotein(a), fecal occult blood; RFID-tagged reagents carry calibration; cloud data management. Several assays need serum, so it is fingerstick for some tests and not others.

HORIBA Microsemi CRP LC-767 / LC-767G (Japan, 1998; CE 2021). The world's first instrument to run a CBC (3-part differential) and CRP simultaneously: 10 µL for CBC, 18 µL for CBC plus CRP (60 µL in the tube including dead volume), 4 minutes. A fixture of Japanese pediatric and general clinics for a quarter century; validated in a Florence neonatal ICU.

Sysmex pocH-100i. 15 µL EDTA whole blood, 17 parameters with a 3-part differential, about 2.5 minutes, moderate complexity, roughly $18,000. Sysmex XW-100 (cleared November 8, 2017). The first CLIA-waived CBC analyzer, approved through the dual 510(k) and CLIA waiver pathway for physician offices with non-laboratory staff: 15 µL venous blood, 12 parameters, 3 minutes, not for oncology or critically ill patients or children under two. The waived CBC exists; it is venous.

PTS Diagnostics CardioChek Plus and A1CNow. Fingerstick total cholesterol, HDL, triglycerides and glucose in about 90 seconds on a handheld; Kroger Health rolled CardioChek Plus out to its more than 2,000 pharmacies and clinics for cardiometabolic screening; A1CNow does HbA1c. Pharmacy fingerstick screening at national scale is a solved logistics problem.

Siemens epoc (Epocal, founded 2001 by Lauks; via Alere to Siemens). Handheld blood gas, electrolytes and metabolites on a single-use test card. Nova Biomedical StatStrip and StatSensor. Hospital glucose from capillary blood (the first meter cleared for critically ill patients, 2018), lactate, ketones, hemoglobin and hematocrit, and creatinine (StatSensor).

Boditech Med ichroma and AFIAS (Chuncheon, Korea). Fluorescence immunoassay readers with dozens of cartridge tests (CRP, hs-CRP, HbA1c, troponin I, CK-MB, D-dimer, NT-proBNP, TSH, ferritin, vitamin D, procalcitonin, PSA, hormones, tumor markers); whole blood accepted without centrifugation on many tests; about 60,000 ichroma readers installed worldwide; 2,600 to 3,600 new ichroma and AFIAS readers placed per quarter in 2025-2026 (4,111 instruments of all types in the second quarter of 2025); 2025 revenue around KRW 160 billion (about $115 million) with 20 percent operating margins; 93 percent of sales outside Korea (MENA 25 percent, Europe 23 percent). The largest honest "immunoassay from a drop" business in the world is Korean and almost unknown in the United States.

Wondfo Finecare (Guangzhou) and Getein 1100/1600 (Nanjing). Fluorescence immunoassay from 3 to 4 drops of whole blood, serum, plasma or urine, 3 to 15 minutes per test, 50-plus tests each; Wondfo claims the largest installed base of any POCT platform in Chinese medical institutions at every level. China's community clinics run quantitative troponin, CRP, HbA1c and hormone tests from a drop every day on these.

Fujifilm DRI-CHEM NX500/600/700 (Japan). Dry-chemistry slides, 10 µL per test (5 µL CRP), 28 colorimetric plus 3 electrolyte tests, 2 to 6 minutes per test, used in Japanese clinics, NICUs and veterinary practices. Arkray SpotChem EZ. Dry chemistry, 21 items, onboard centrifuge, serum or plasma (250 µL whole blood), a clinic analyzer since the 1990s.

5. The modern multi-category boxes

Truvian Health TruVerus (San Diego; founded 2015 as Truvian Sciences; about $206 to $294 million raised depending on whether debt is counted; last priced round $74 million Series D July 2024). A desktop-computer-sized instrument combining clinical chemistry, immunoassay and hematology, running 34 ordered tests from one lithium-heparin tube. FDA 510(k) K251058 on December 2, 2025 for the instrument plus creatinine, BUN and eGFR; nine more analytes (cardiovascular, liver, core metabolic) on January 7, 2026; CBC on January 12, 2026, the first CBC cleared from a lithium-heparin sample, bringing the platform to 26 cleared assays. Clinical program: more than 50,000 samples from more than 5,000 donors, run reliability above 98 percent. Full commercial launch planned for the second half of 2026; Siemens Healthineers signed on October 1, 2026 to help with manufacturing and marketing. Both clearances are for venous blood; fingerstick would need separate evidence. Ten years, a quarter of a billion dollars, honest data, venous only. This is the real benchmark for the 2013 box.

Genalyte (San Diego) Maverick and Merlin. Silicon photonic ring resonators: more than 100 micro-rings per chip, each functionalized for one analyte, four rings per analyte, label-free, direct from whole blood. FDA 510(k) for an RNP autoimmune assay (2019) and for TSH (July 2024, the first quantitative immunoassay cleared on a silicon chip); hsCRP in development (R squared 0.96 against Beckman DxI). Merlin bundles a chemistry analyzer, a hematology analyzer and the Maverick immunoassay into one system promising results in under 30 minutes; 30 pounds. Fingerstick ANA panels were studied in a rheumatology clinic. A slow, careful regulatory path.

biosurfit spinit (Azambuja, Portugal; privately held). A centrifugal microfluidic disc platform that performs immunoassays by surface plasmon resonance, hematology by imaging and chemistry by photometry on the same instrument. CE marks: CRP 2012 (8 µL, under 4 minutes), blood count 2013-2014 (5-part white differential and hematocrit), HbA1c 2016 (5 µL, IFCC and NGSP certified 2017), COVID-19 2021; a "spinit strip" collection method in 2019. The 500th instrument shipped in February 2017; 13 countries by 2017; still exhibiting at MEDICA 2025. The closest technical realization of the Theranos box, delivered honestly in 2012, has reached only a few hundred placements. The lesson is commercial, not technical.

Samsung LABGEO PT10 (chemistry) and IB10 (immunoassay), early 2010s to 2019. 70 µL of whole blood, 7 minutes, cartridges of up to 15 chemistry analytes (liver, kidney, lipids) plus HbA1c; a 2016 evaluation found AST in whole blood exceeded CLIA bias limits. Samsung discontinued the entire line on January 1, 2020 (PT10 to Precision Bio, IB10 to Nexus Dx, HC10 hematology to Diatron). A conglomerate with unlimited engineering built the box and exited. The box is buildable; the business is hard.

LumiraDx (UK; Ron Zwanziger with David Scott and Jerry McAleer, 2014). Microfluidic test strips on a small instrument: CRP, D-dimer, HbA1c, INR, NT-proBNP, troponin, COVID-19 antigen and antibody, with molecular TB under a Gates Foundation grant; fingerstick for many assays; CE-marked across the menu, with FDA emergency use authorizations for COVID tests. Raised about $779 million in private placements per SEC filings plus a 2021 SPAC and later offerings (totals of $700 million to $1.4 billion are quoted). COVID testing collapsed, the CEO, CTO and chief scientist resigned in November 2023, administrators were appointed, and Roche bought the point-of-care technology for up to $350 million (closed July 29, 2024). Shareholders received nothing. Zwanziger had previously built MediSense (sold to Abbott for $876 million), Inverness Medical Technology (sold to Johnson and Johnson) and Alere (sold to Abbott for $5.3 billion in 2017). Even the most successful serial founder in point-of-care diagnostics lost his fourth company to the economics of a broad-menu fingerstick platform.

Baebies FINDER (Durham, NC; Vamsee Pamula). Digital microfluidics (electrowetting droplets) in a closed cartridge; G6PD test for newborns cleared (CE 2019, FDA); Flu A/B plus SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR received dual 510(k) clearance and CLIA waiver on March 31, 2026 (positives in 15 minutes); an anti-factor Xa heparin test from 50 µL has FDA Breakthrough designation (April 2025). Baebies says FINDER supports chemistry, immunoassay, molecular and coagulation from small volumes and has delivered 22 million tests across its platforms. A credible multi-category small-volume platform coming from the pediatric side.

SpinChip Diagnostics (Oslo; bioMérieux bought 20 percent in March 2024 and the rest for €138 million, closing January 20, 2025). A spinning microfluidic chip runs a high-sensitivity troponin I immunoassay from a single drop of whole blood in about 10 minutes with laboratory-grade sensitivity; NT-proBNP and D-dimer to follow. The SPINCHIP platform launched in Europe with CE marking in autumn 2026. An exit at €138 million at the CE-mark stage, before any revenue.

Siemens Healthineers Atellica VTLi (ex-Philips Minicare, Magnotech magnetic nanoparticle technology). Fingerstick high-sensitivity cardiac troponin I in 8 minutes on a handheld; CE-marked 2021; multicenter studies in New Zealand and Italy (966 patients); a US pivotal trial (PLAyEUS) was designed to support an FDA submission; no FDA clearance located as of November 2026. Fingerstick high-sensitivity troponin exists in Europe.

Abionic abioSCOPE (Lausanne; EPFL spinout 2010). Nanofluidic capsules read in 5 minutes: pancreatic stone protein for early sepsis from a fingerstick, ferritin for iron deficiency (CE 2017), a one-minute SARS-CoV-2 antigen test. Wikipedia cites a report of FDA clearance for the PSP test; a 2019 pivotal study claimed sepsis detection 24 hours earlier than standard care. Nanomix eLab (California). Handheld electrochemical cartridge measuring lactate, CRP and procalcitonin in 11 minutes; CE-marked 2019 (plasma) and 2022 (whole blood); a 510(k) was described as imminent in 2022 and no clearance has been found. ProciseDx (San Diego). Time-resolved fluorescence; 2 to 5 minute tests from fingerstick blood; FDA 510(k) for the instrument and a serum CRP test (November 2022); De Novo authorizations in 2023 for the first rapid tests of infliximab and adalimumab drug levels; CE marks for four assays; Nestlé Health Science and Biosynex shareholders. OPKO Diagnostics Claros 1 (from Claros Diagnostics, co-founded by Columbia's Samuel Sia). Fingerstick total PSA in 10 to 12 minutes on a credit-card cartridge, approved by FDA through a full PMA (P170037) on January 30, 2019 after an 864-patient study. Sia's academic mChip ran HIV and syphilis tests from fingerstick blood in Rwanda in 15 minutes and synced results to records in 2013.

6. Hematology from a drop

The CBC is the single most ordered test and the hardest to do from a fingertip at retail.

Sight Diagnostics OLO (Israel; founded 2011 by Yossi Pollak and Daniel Levner; about $124 million raised; CNBC Disruptor 50 in 2021 at a $594 million valuation). Two drops of fingerstick or venous blood on a cartridge, imaged as a monolayer with machine vision; 19 parameters with a 5-part differential in minutes; FDA 510(k) December 2019 (the first CBC analyzer cleared for direct fingerstick collection); CE-marked for point of care; a Superdrug pharmacy pilot in the UK. The company never obtained the CLIA waiver it promised in 2019 and 2020, so in the US it stayed in moderate-complexity settings. Laid off 30 percent of staff in 2024 and all remaining employees (about 20) in April 2026. The best fingerstick CBC ever cleared in the US died of distribution economics.

PixCell Medical HemoScreen (Israel). 20 µL; "viscoelastic focusing" aligns cells in a single plane for imaging; 20 parameters with a 5-part differential in about 6 minutes; FDA 510(k) K180020 and a direct fingerstick sampling 510(k) in August 2023; moderate complexity; $16,250 analyzer, cartridges about $15 per test. Sold to pediatric practices and clinics.

Athelas (Mountain View; now part of Commure). Fingerstick white cell count and neutrophil percentage by computer vision; 510(k) 2018, home-use CLIA-waived version 2022 (which the company calls standard of care for clozapine monitoring), point-of-care clearance for pharmacies and ambulatory sites February 12, 2026. Platelets, hemoglobin and a full differential remain in trials or review. Athelas is now part of Commure, whose core business is revenue-cycle software.

Essenlix iMOST (Princeton; Stephen Chou). A CBC from 10 µL on a smartphone attachment in 3 to 5 minutes; about $20 million raised; 510(k) submitted in 2018; iMOST-U CE-marked November 2023; FDA clearance still pending in 2025. Entia Liberty (UK). The first regulated at-home full blood count, for chemotherapy patients, UKCA-approved 2024; tested with more than 1,000 patients at five NHS cancer centers; £16 million Series A. Sanguina AnemoCheck Home. The only FDA-cleared home hemoglobin test (2023), prescription only.

7. Home and consumer devices

SiPhox Health (Burlington, MA; MIT spinout, Khosla, Intel Capital, Y Combinator). Silicon photonic biochips intended to measure proteins and hormones from a fingerstick at home in under 5 minutes; $27 million raised by 2023 and an A2 round in 2025 (about $35 million total); revenue doubled in 2024; sells mail-in kits (upper-arm "EasyDraw") covering up to 62 biomarkers while the home analyzer is not on sale while the company pursues FDA clearance. The honest sequencing: sell the mail-in service first, clear the device later.

Bloom Diagnostics (Zurich and Vienna; founded 2018). The "Bloom Lab," a muesli-bowl-sized reader; fingerstick ferritin, TSH, CRP, kidney and AMH tests in about 10 minutes; a flagship walk-in store opened in Zurich in 2021; a starter pack with the reader costs €369 and single tests about €24, but the shop now restricts purchase to medically qualified users. Consumer-direct quantitative testing in Europe retreated to professional use.

Kalium Health (Cambridge, UK). A glucometer-style strip for blood potassium for kidney patients; £950,000 seed; in clinical trials since 2022; not yet approved anywhere. 1drop Diagnostics (Neuchâtel). Fingerstick electrochemical cartridges; $7.75 million raised; liquidation began April 2025 and the company was struck from the register in October 2026.

Cue Health (San Diego). At-home molecular COVID test; $480 million-plus raised; $3 billion IPO in 2021; after at-home COVID testing collapsed and a May 2024 FDA inspection found unauthorized changes to its tests, it shut down on May 24, 2024 and filed for Chapter 7 liquidation. Forward (CarePod). A $99-a-month "doctor's office in a box" with blood draws and swabs and no clinician on site; $400 to $650 million raised; planned 3,200 CarePods in 2024, deployed a handful, shut down November 18, 2024. Flux Biosciences. Co-founded in 2017 by Theranos whistleblower Tyler Shultz and Stanford's Shan Wang to bring magnetic biosensing into homes; pivoted to urine hormone tests; now listed as permanently closed. Haemanthus. See the autopsy; no product.

8. Collection plus a central lab: the model that is working

Babson Diagnostics BetterWay (Austin; spun out of Siemens Healthineers in 2017 by Eric Olson and David Stein; about $44.7 million disclosed in venture funding plus undisclosed 2024 Series C and strategic money from Siemens Healthineers, BD, H-E-B and Emerald). Pharmacy staff collect six drops from a fingertip with the BD MiniDraw system, an automated device prepares and stores the sample, and a central "microsample lab" runs it on adapted commercial analyzers. 44 clinical studies on nearly a million tests to show equivalence with venous testing; launched in Austin pharmacies (H-E-B, Peoples Rx, Lake Hills); 61 tests by April 2025, 68 by March 2026 including a GLP-1 monitoring panel under $100; posted prices such as CBC $25, comprehensive metabolic panel $19, HbA1c $19, hepatic panel $15; insurance accepted for clinician-ordered tests; 20-plus Austin locations plus health-system partnerships; new CEO in 2026. Press coverage has framed it as Theranos's ambition realized by other people. It achieves drop, menu, retail, price and accuracy; it does not achieve minutes, by design.

BD MiniDraw Capillary Blood Collection System. 510(k) cleared December 2023 for lipid panel, selected chemistry and hemoglobin/hematocrit (16 analytes) from 16 to 18 drops, about one tenth of a venous draw, in "ancillary healthcare facilities" such as pharmacies; expanded with Babson to US health systems in December 2024.

Tasso (Seattle). A button device on the upper arm forms a vacuum, a lancet pricks the skin, and 200 to 600 µL of whole blood flows into a standard microtube; 510(k) K221131 August 2022 as a Class II lancet; CE 2023; about 4 million devices shipped; used by clinical trials and home-testing services. YourBio Health (formerly Seventh Sense; Flagship Pioneering). TAP (100 µL, HbA1c, 510(k) 2017; lay use 2019) and TAP Micro Select (500 µL, 510(k) April 2023); TAP II is CE-marked but investigational in the US. Drawbridge Health OneDraw (GE Healthcare spinout 2015; Thorne HealthTech majority owner since 2021). Upper-arm lancets with light suction onto a stabilized cartridge; 510(k) for HbA1c in August 2019; large home-use surveillance studies.

Vitestro Aletta (Utrecht). An autonomous venipuncture robot: ultrasound vein finding, needle insertion, tube filling, bandage; CE mark August 2024 (first of its kind); 95 percent first-stick success in the ADOPT pivotal trial; deployed in Dutch and Danish hospitals; $70 million Series B; US trials at Mayo, Northwestern and Baylor Scott and White; FDA De Novo authorization now stated on the company site. The opposite approach to the phlebotomist shortage: keep the vein, remove the human.

9. Mail-in and direct-to-consumer services

Function Health (Austin and New York). 160-plus tests twice a year for $365 (cut from $499 in late 2025), drawn at 2,200 Quest locations or at home via Getlabs (acquired April 2026); acquired Ezra whole-body MRI (May 2025) and SuppCo (May 2026); $298 million Series B at $2.5 billion (November 2025) and $450 million from General Catalyst (July 2026); hundreds of thousands of members. Function is a software and marketing layer on Quest's labs. It achieves menu, price and accuracy with zero new hardware. LetsGetChecked (Dublin and New York). Self-collected fingerstick kits and its own labs; $263 to $448 million raised; 15 million patients; an FDA-cleared at-home HPV self-collection kit (2026). Everly Health (Austin). $330 million raised; one in 86 US households tested in 2024; its broadest 83-marker panel requires a Quest visit. Thriva (UK). Fingerstick and upper-arm self-collection; more than 650,000 tests by 2025; in-clinic testing at Superdrug. Superpower. $199 a year for 100-plus biomarkers via mobile phlebotomy; 64,000 members. Quest itself (2,400 patient service centers, many in retail stores) will sell a 50-biomarker panel through Apple Health in 2026; LabCorp agreed in 2018 to open at least 600 patient service centers inside Walgreens.

10. Molecular at the point of care

Mostly swabs rather than blood, but these prove "minutes, anywhere, non-lab staff" for the hardest assay class. Cepheid GeneXpert, bioMérieux BioFire, Abbott ID NOW: cartridge PCR and isothermal systems in thousands of clinics. Visby Medical (San Jose). A single-use palm-sized PCR device; the first over-the-counter PCR test ever authorized (women's sexual health, De Novo March 28, 2025) and an OTC flu plus COVID PCR (mid-2026); distributed through Quest, LabCorp, DoorDash and others. binx health io. FDA-cleared, CLIA-waived PCR for chlamydia and gonorrhea within the visit; more than 1,000 instruments installed; merged with Sapphiros to form Onvaro in 2026. Molbio Truenat (Goa, India). Battery-powered chip PCR for tuberculosis and other infections (43 assays covering 30 diseases); WHO-endorsed 2020; 12,500-plus devices in 90-plus countries, 8,000 to 9,000 sites in India's primary health centers; the 2025 Kochon Prize. Decentralized molecular testing at national scale is a solved problem when a government pays for it.

11. The 2003 vision, for context: continuous monitoring

Abbott FreeStyle Libre and Dexcom (Stelo over the counter 2024) made continuous glucose monitoring routine. Abbott's Libre Duo 10 Day, the first dual glucose-plus-ketone sensor, received FDA De Novo authorization on August 25, 2026, with pump integrations due 2026-2027. Biolinq Shine, an intradermal microsensor array 20 times shallower than a CGM filament, received De Novo classification on September 23, 2025 and an over-the-counter 510(k) in 2026 after a $100 million Series C. Nutromics (Melbourne) published the first-in-human continuous measurement of a drug (vancomycin) with electrochemical aptamer microneedles in Nature Biotechnology in February 2026, has run 85 participants including 27 ICU patients, demonstrated two-drug multiplexing in animals, and received FDA Breakthrough designation in 2026; skeptics note aptamer sensor drift beyond 12 hours. Closed-loop insulin systems (iLet, Control-IQ, Omnipod 5) are the realized version of Holmes's "sense and dose" patch, for one molecule.

12. Low-resource and academic pioneers

HealthCube (India). A dictionary-sized kit testing 55-plus parameters (glucose, hemoglobin, infectious markers, ECG, blood pressure) on a power bank; approved by India's CDSCO; 380 to 400 devices in Uttarakhand primary health centers, deployments in Assam, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland; 2.5 million tests; a 2025 review notes consumable costs and power reliability limit uptake. SigTuple AI100 (Bangalore). AI microscopy for blood smears and urine; FDA 510(k) in 2023, the first Indian AI-assisted microscopy product cleared in the US; deployed at HCG, Manipal and SRL; $50 million raised. Hemex Health Gazelle (Portland and Case Western). Battery-powered microchip electrophoresis identifies sickle cell and other hemoglobin variants from 20 µL of fingerstick blood in 8 minutes and detects malaria hemozoin magneto-optically in about a minute; CE-marked; approved in India and Ghana; FDA Breakthrough designation February 2026. Ilara Health (Nairobi). Finances and installs point-of-care devices in 150 to 260 Kenyan clinics with remote deactivation for non-payment. Academic groups: George Whitesides (Harvard) and Diagnostics For All on paper microfluidics; Aydogan Ozcan (UCLA) on lensless holographic cell counting on phones; Paul Yager (Washington) on paper networks; Rebecca Richards-Kortum (Rice) on low-cost devices; Kevin Plaxco (UCSB) on the aptamer sensors behind Nutromics; Samuel Sia (Columbia) on mChip and Claros.

13. The people who built the pieces

14. The graveyard, priced

The pattern: broad fingerstick platforms die of distribution and reimbursement, not of physics. Narrow devices with a clear buyer (emergency departments for i-STAT, primary care for QuikRead, vets for Abaxis) live for decades.

15. Full scorecard

Status as of November 2026. A Drop, B Menu, C Minutes, D Retail, E Price, F Accuracy. 69 entries. Groups: Decades (narrow-menu devices shipping for years), Multi-box (broad-menu instruments), Hematology, Home & kiosk, Collection (devices and services that move the sample to a lab), Consumer lab, Molecular, Continuous (the 2003 vision), Low-resource, Reference.

16. What this means for a new entrant

1. Do not compete on physics. Every engine type needed is proven and some are 30 years old. Compete on integration, pre-analytics, honesty and distribution.
2. The CBC is the wedge and the trap. It is the most ordered test and the one patients most want in minutes; two Israeli companies cleared fingerstick CBCs and one is dead. A fingerstick CBC alone does not pay for a company. Bundle it with chemistry and immunoassays or it is a feature, not a business.
3. Minutes versus menu is a real trade. Babson chose menu (68 tests) and gave up minutes. Truvian chose minutes and breadth and gave up fingerstick (so far). The architecture in the next document tries to hold both by splitting the sample and sending the long tail to a hub.
4. Reimbursement decides survival. Medicare pays $7.77 for a CBC and $10.56 for a metabolic panel; cuts of up to 15 percent a year may begin in 2027. Consumables must cost a few dollars, or the customer must pay cash for convenience (Babson's $19 to $25), or the test must unlock a billable pharmacist service.
5. Big-box retail partners are a risk, not a strategy. Walgreens (Theranos, then VillageMD), Walmart Health and Forward all show what happens when the partner's economics change. Independent pharmacies, urgent cares and health systems with CLIA waivers are the durable buyers.
6. Honesty is a competitive asset now. Every article about a fingerstick company in 2026 contains the word Theranos. The company that publishes its method comparisons before launch, names its lab director, and refuses to claim capillary performance until it has capillary data will be trusted precisely because the field is scarred.