Correct, but I'm extremely skeptical, and that sentence had my bullshit detector alarms screaming even louder:
> “We have a minimum viable product that’s already being used in clinical trials, and while there’s more work to be done, we’re much closer to a full marketable device,” Shaker said.
Absolutely no information about what this "clinical trial" entails, or what phase it was. Most importantly, to get an initial assessment of the accuracy of the device, no clinical trials are necessary - you simply need to do a test that compares the blood sugar reading from the device against the current gold standard, most likely first in some animal model.
If their device was really as far along as the title and quotes are implying, they would be showered with so much money it would make the Theranos peak valuation look small. The only evidence they've provided (which, again, I'm not saying is insignificant) is that the "metasurface" they have developed enhances the resolution and sensitivity of a radar system against a beaker of water.
It’s fair to be skeptical. Personally, I’ll believe it when I see it in action. There’s likely an unexplained catch or they wouldn’t have shared any hard data in the paper.
One possibility is that they want to sell this technology to a big company without publicly disclosing all their trade secrets. However, this research could have been sponsored by a public grant, which would have compelled them to share some information. Therefore, they published a paper that appears more like a patent application than a research paper with solid data. It’s still noteworthy that it was published in Nature.
> It’s still noteworthy that it was published in Nature.
FWIW, it was not published in 'Nature' but in 'Communications Engineering', a journal by Nature Portfolio (formerly known as Nature Publishing Group, part of Springer Nature). It is a new Open Access journal, established only in 2022. Given the track record of their 'Scientific Reports' journal [1], I would be rather cautious regarding the quality of the works published at 'Communications Engineering'.
IMHO, Nature Portfolio is doing their 'Nature' journal a disservice by hosting all of their journals at nature.com. I guess this is intentional, letting their less prestigious journals profit from Nature's prominence.
Well… yes. Looking at the article, it satisfies the MVP requirements for getting grant funding. A bar GlucoWatch cleared more than two decades ago, though it could never quite clear the bar of clinical viability.
I have probably seen "viable" overinterpreted 100s of times by now. Perhaps we need to re-interpret the 'V' in "MVP" as "VC-investable" or perhaps replace it with 'I' to be I)nvestible which gets you a more pronounceable "MIP" (and maybe, just maybe highlights uncertainty since all investment carries risk)? Happens to also abbreviate "Multum In Parvo" (Latin for "many/much in little") which is not even that far off from the semantic. ;-)
Indeed, and for different audiences, you need to be ready to present your MIP with different levels of detail. I propose we call this new process... MIP mapping. :p
> “We have a minimum viable product that’s already being used in clinical trials, and while there’s more work to be done, we’re much closer to a full marketable device,” Shaker said.
Absolutely no information about what this "clinical trial" entails, or what phase it was. Most importantly, to get an initial assessment of the accuracy of the device, no clinical trials are necessary - you simply need to do a test that compares the blood sugar reading from the device against the current gold standard, most likely first in some animal model.
If their device was really as far along as the title and quotes are implying, they would be showered with so much money it would make the Theranos peak valuation look small. The only evidence they've provided (which, again, I'm not saying is insignificant) is that the "metasurface" they have developed enhances the resolution and sensitivity of a radar system against a beaker of water.