From: Twink (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sun Jan 04 1998 - 17:51:30 MST
At 09:44 PM 1/4/98 +0100, Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se> wrote:
>> But does it, at least, contain things which might be harder to monitor from
>> blood samples?
>
>I think so. I haven't got my medicine book here, so I cannot check,
>but there are some substances that are more concentrated in urine than
>in blood (especially those linked with signs of kidney failure, of
>course). But the blood is richer in information, urine is highly
>filtrated and does not normally contain the proteins that provide the
>really interesting clues.
Then my guess is that blood tests will be the core and urine tests only
the periphery of the kit.
>> Interesting, because my suggestion was going to be to just get some
>> healthy ranges and warn users that the test kit is not foolproof.
>
>It is just a matter of statistics. If the normal range contains 95% of
>the population, then if you make 10 tests there is a 40% chance that
>at least one of them will be out of the normal range even for a
>healthy person. With a hundred tests it is a 99.4% chance that at
>least one will be strange.
Chances are the kit we are talking about, in its initial version would be
closer to the 10 test and not 100 test side of the spectrum. I would
imagine that anything that is abnormal can be reported to an expert
or backed up with more tests.
Perhaps the kit could be a way of having physicians remotely
monitor patients. That could be the initial market, with all the aging
babyboomers creeping toward senescence...
Daniel Ust
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