Fast, Accurate & Easy To Understand Home Blood Testing

Quantified Self General Health
1

Like many on the forum I’ve had an interest in tracking changes to health over time through DIY Proteomic and Metabolomic testing.

After many requests from friends and colleagues, I started putting together a direct to consumer home based blood test service, analysing a range of biomarkers. With the help of a small professional team I’m now ready to take it worldwide, and will be launching an Indiegogo campaign in mid-June.

I’m currently looking for “active trackers” to provide feedback to help refine the service before we go live. I’d love to hear from some of you guys on the forum who may be interested in taking part.

2

Thanks Dave, I’m definitely interested in this. I notice that it has the almost the same name as http://www.talking20.com/. They were doing this but seem to have stopped. (The products are marked as “sold out.”)

3

Ernesto and I became curious after this post, we were wondering whatever happened to Heather Heine’s company, Talking20. After some searching around, we found this post in the BulletProof Forum with text from an email that apparently went out to their supporters:

[i][font=Courier]Dear Friends,

We are overdue for an update to all of you. As we travel the rocky road of starting an ambitious new venture, we think often about our early supporters. It is your belief in the value of our work that keeps us motivated every day!

There have been delays in the delivery of our data and you have all been waiting patiently for your results. We feel it is time to bring everyone into the loop so there is no mystery about the status of our efforts to date.

Early in our development we received feedback from the US Food & Drug Administration regarding our testing method and results platform. After months of teamwork between Talking20, legal advisors, regulatory officers, and peers in the digital health space a conclusion was reached: Our collection methods are safe, but it is unclear whether it is safe for you all to see your own personal health results directly from us.

Undeterred by this hurdle, we are exploring new collaborations with approved analysis labs that will produce results that meet our standards for accuracy and can be used on the platform that we have been working to create. While we are disappointed with the delay caused by this setback, we are happy that there is a clear path forward. Yes, there is data in your future!

You may notice a few other changes here at T20. Due to these delays, we have temporarily closed our online stores. Our focus now is meeting our commitment to our existing customers. We will send additional updates when we are ready to begin full data analysis.

As always, we greatly appreciate your interest and your patience while work to make our contribution to the personal health data revolution.

The future lies ahead!

Heather Heine, MD PhD
Talking20 Founder & CEO[/font][/i]

I’ve emailed Heather asking for an update.

4

Hey Gary - I discovered Talking20 about a year ago when looking for a solution to improve my DIY blood work experiments. I missed their Indiegogo campaign and never heard back via email as to where they were at. This is when I started to work on commercialising some of my work.

Studying their approach has been key in helping to develop our product, and I would be lying by saying the name wasn’t influenced, in part, by Talking20.

5

Hi Dave, thanks for picking up the trail where Talking20 left off. It’s important to have access to DIY blood measures. What is your thought about dealing with the hurdle that knocked Heather out? It looks like the FDA says no to this kind of direct-to-consumer, doctor-free blood analysis.

6

Heather Heine of Talking20 replied:

[font=Courier][i]

[…]
…looks like a UK based Indiegogo crowd fund campaign based pretty closely on our idea. With even the same information and links on the webpages I see. A nice form of flattery.

We are still working away hard at making this available. Building this product has proven much harder than anticipated from several fronts, but we have recently made some significant progress. Without going into details, I can say it is no small feat to do something this disruptive in health!

Everyone we have tested with to date will get their results back as soon as we are able to provide them, and for those involved at our early stages we have some special things planned for them as our ‘founding customers’.

Thanks for the ongoing support and interest.
[…]

Cheers
H.

Heather L. Heine MD PhD
Founder & CEO Talking20 Inc.
heather@talking20.com[/i][/font]

–

Sounds like a difficult path so far.
Gary

7

Hi Gary,

We’re based in the UK so the FDA isn’t a direct problem to operations for now, although one we’re fully aware of. Don’t get me wrong, regulation is still a hurdle in the EU. However, from discussions we’ve had with various bodies it seems their attitudes are much more progressive than those in the US.

On this subject - It is our plan to launch worldwide through Indiegogo, and I’m expecting a lot of orders from the US. Right now we comply fully with all US import and export regulations. Obviously as the business develops, we will be opening discussion with national bodies like the FDA for approvals.

Also, it’s great to hear Talking20 are still working hard to fulfil Indieogogo orders. I’m going to shoot Heather another email as I think there’s much we could share.