The tension at the heart of new healthcare tech

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A little bit of blood. A short wait. A test for more than 50 different cancers.

Grail's Galleri test sounds too good to be true. And with cancer on the rise among young people, a simple, noninvasive test done at home sounds like a breakthrough.

Or is it?

BI's health correspondent Hilary Brueck decided to see for herself and took the test.

What she found sits in a gray area. The test has had some success with early detection, but it's far from perfect. Grail's own laboratory study from 2021 said the Galleri test caught cancer just 51.5% of the time.

Hilary noted that the test doesn't include much context or follow-up analysis. Her results were simply, "no cancer detected."

It's also not cheap. With a listed price of $950, it's not something the average American can spring for. Especially when it's essentially a coin flip whether it detects cancer at all.

Even Grail's first CEO, Jeff Huber, sees that as a problem.

"I do feel deeply offended by the current state of things where Grail is a rich people product," he told Hilary.

The Galleri test highlights the tension at the heart of new medical technology.

Dismissing imperfect tests feels too extreme. In a world where doctors are coming up empty on the mysterious rise of colon cancer, anything to help with early detection is a good thing.

And the more chances companies like Grail have to fine-tune the process, the closer we could get to perfection.

Investors don't always have that kind of patience. Earlier this year, Grail announced its biggest trial yet had failed to meet its primary goal of reducing late-stage cancer diagnoses. Shortly after the news broke, its share price dropped 50%.

Optimism for new health tech, when taken to the extreme, also has limits. Just ask another blood-testing startup: Theranos.

But as long as the company is clear about a test's limitations, as has been the case with Grail, stopping in pursuit of perfection feels like leaving a lot on the table.

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