Walgreens won’t open any new Theranos Inc. blood-testing centers until company resolves technology issues
According to a Walgreens official, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. is not going to open any new Theranos Inc. blood-testing centers until questions about its technology are resolved by the startup company. A team from the drugstore chain met senior Theranos executives on Thursday at the startup’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif.
The executives included founder and Chief Executive Elizabeth Holmes. The people familiar with the matter said that request for the meeting was made by Walgreens after its directors and officials came to know about some stuff from previous week’s article in The Wall Street Journal. They learned that the proprietary lab instrument created by Theranos as the anchor of the company’s growth strategy dealt with just a small fraction of the tests sold to consumers at 2014 end.
According to the people, Walgreens officials were also concerned after learning in a follow-up article in the Journal that Theranos had halted the collection of small vials of blood taken from finger pricks for all but one of its over 240 tests.
The people mentioned that Walgreens officials were also not aware that the Food and Drug Administration did a surprise inspection of Theranos facilities in August and September.
The Walgreens official said the talks between Theranos and Walgreens are going on, and in the meantime the drugstore chain has ‘no concrete plans at this stage’ regarding the expansion of the collaboration beyond the 41 stores in Arizona and California that present include Theranos ‘wellness centers’.
The official added, “We’re trying to figure out where we are and what we do going forward. We need to understand the truth”.