Cynical interpretation: well-funded med-tech company hires an incredibly well-connected board and presumably a great PR firm, and lands an epic puff piece in Fortune.

Uncynical interpretation: well-funded med-tech company quietly grows to become an inspiring success, thanks to game-changing technology and a brilliant founder.

I see both of these interpretations as compatible. In fact, #1 can often follow from #2. In either or both cases, this seems like the kind of company we should root for: using new approaches to technology to solve big problems. As another commenter in this thread put it: this is a lot more than just "Yo."

I had a smile on my face while reading this article. Regardless of the PR behind the article, it's certainly refreshing to see a startup like this. I'm rooting for them. Medtech needs game changing technologies!

Agreed. I say that as a tech geek and as someone who, unfortunately, is a frequent and regular blood-test patient.

Pretty clear, they are getting significant traction in a market dominated by 'old school' companies and players. Perhaps their PR department wanted to get out front with the narrative :-). Having friends that work around the FDA's influence it is a very politicized space. She clearly built her board such that she could counter those threats.

Ah, the FDA, that makes sense. There's a certain hallucinogenic quality to the prose that, when combined with the Kissenger namedrop, made me kinda nervous. I guess that's just because I don't generally read fortune magazine.

Wild guess? Someone at DOD or DOS has a simulation that really has them spooked and wants to get civilian testing coverage in place fast, so they've thrown support behind Holmes who has a way to do it. Zombie jokes aside, it's really a pretty reasonable first step for pandemic resilience.

Or Holmes is an alien who wants to inject everyone with vegan mind control spiders.

Either way it's likely good for humanity in the long run.

> Someone at DOD or DOS has a simulation that really has them spooked and wants to get civilian testing coverage

NORTHCOM maybe (they're the geographic combatant commander in charge of DSCA planning for pandemic influenza). But despite the horror show portrayed about the military in all the zombie/pandemic movies, the military wants badly to avoid anything to do with this mission at all, so it wouldn't surprise me if they're trying to get contractors to do the heavy lifting for response planning.

What is a near-certainty is that the timing of this piece is not random, especially considering that board composition.