The concept itself is pretty exciting - A simple home based device capable of providing some bio markers that indicate different conditions.<p>The science behind these - i.e. the correlation of said marker with the linked condition is not as cut-and-dry but still within the bounds of usefulness.<p>The execution is something we will have to see - the many 3D renders are not exactly promising<p>The Web site is an abomination - terrible scroll hijacking, Stock pictures of Gross things, low info density, etc, etc
Now if they would only promise not to sell off your personal health data.<p>Call me skeptical, but there has to be some negative consequence for giving this kind of personal info out in the future.<p>I imagine it being like, "Sorry sir, your health record indicates you were sick 5 times last year. You're a health risk, so we can't hire you".<p>"Your elevated testosterone levels indicate that you'll be an overly-aggressive employee.."<p>Anywho... Cool video, right?
This seems... ambitious. The prospects for reliable home flu testing alone seem challenging; for instance, here's WBUR reporting on an NSF-funded, CDC-advised pilot to get home flu tests to Boston residents:<p><a href="http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2014/01/home-flu-test-goviral" rel="nofollow">http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2014/01/home-flu-test-goviral</a><p>The "good" version of the test requires an offsite lab.<p>Also: if you have a product that detects influenza and fertility, why lead off your marketing with "inflammation" and recommendations for green smoothies? It's hard to tell whether this is a serious product or something for people who shop at GNC.<p>The founders have math backgrounds but no biotech pedigree, although they do have a gold-plated advisor board.
I can’t imagine how this company won’t get sued out of existence. They are making some pretty broad and probably inaccurate statements, and also offering medical advice.<p>Detecting inflammation probably isn’t that hard, but I’d bet they are detecting a particular marker of inflammation and reporting that as inflammation. Which could be meaningful in combination with other factors, or it could mean the person being tested has a cold, or ate a 12 inch Subway Sandwich.<p>Also advising someone to drink a green smoothie may lower the particular marker they are measuring, but probably won’t alleviate actual inflammation or it’s related symptoms at all.<p>My wife has had a chronic inflammatory disease for years and has tried it all, including smoothies, and has find even really powerful anti-inflammatory drugs don’t cure the inflammation or remove all symptoms.<p>I do like the idea of the device and applications though, but I’m really worried about the way they present information.
A lot of this stuff seems rather obvious.<p>Vitamin D low? Pretty sure people know whether they should be more active. If I'm sitting at a PC all day (like most developers) I know when my activity levels are low, I don't need a machine to tell me that.<p>Inflammation? I've been an athlete my whole life, so I'm pretty tuned into my body. If I have inflammation somewhere, and it's not sports related, I'll most likely leave that to a trained professional, not some machine.<p>Influenza? See above. If I get really sick, I got to the doctor. Since there's really no pill you can take to cure you of the flu (it's a virus), by the time I'd check this machine, I'd be better off just seeing my doctor, which is most likely a worst case scenario.<p>Testosterone? I'm an athlete by trade and have never had any issues with this. I have a healthy diet and am still very active for my age. Not sure this would help me other than to confirm I have normal levels; something I can find out at my yearly physical if I really want to.<p>Fertility? Not even going to go there.<p>Basically if you're a couch potato, and have a shit diet, this might be helpful to you. The vast majority of people I know who smoke and have a crappy lifestyle and diet, they know it. It's just up to them to make the change. Not sure this machine would get them to do that.
This has shown up on HN before: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743036" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743036</a><p>That said, "inflammation is elevated, recover with a green smoothie" seems like questionable medical advice. I pretty much gave up on this right there.
I'll just wait on Integrated Plasmonics to ship something. Cue might have fit some market with existing tech, but it looks pretty niche. "Deep" monitoring...and then testosterone. Wonderful. I'll know if lifting weights really affects testosterone levels while completely missing that prostate cancer on the way. We have deep testing. We don't have broad or cheap testing. The fact that the tests aren't cheap, (fertility???) and the marketing strikes me as pretending existing things are new makes me think this is investment fodder. I didn't wake up today decided to be negative. The product gives me signals that seem to betray a lack of sincerity in terms of delivering anything with truly new value propositions.
This page is a lot more clear about the product I think: <a href="https://cue.me/product" rel="nofollow">https://cue.me/product</a><p>I still see no information on how long the "wand" (sample taker) lasts.. Can I take 10 drops of blood? 100? Infinite?
Green smoothies? Gross.<p>Instead of stock photos of people running, it'd be great if they laid out the specific features/sensors of this thing.
There is something to be said for keeping track of your health, but with too much monitoring (without an external reason), you're just generating too much data and will end up with false positives. They need to make a much better case for <i>why</i> I would want to monitor these things...