Walgreens freezes partnership with Theranos amid testing fallout

It might have something to do with-ok, probably much to do with-the current investigation of Theranos which came out of the anonymous report of a former employee which suggested that the Palo-Alto-based company was having a few issues with their proprietary Edison blood testing machines. An official at the drug store chain, which now houses “wellness centers” powered by the startup’s technology in 41 of its stores, tells the Journal that the company won’t be expanding the program for the time being.

Walgreens officials were also spooked by a follow-up story in the newspaper that said that Theranos had stopped collecting tiny vials of blood drawn from finger pricks for all but one of its more than 200 tests after the FDA paid the company a surprise visit in August and September. Walgreens has a total of 8,240 stores in the USA, and represents an excellent way for Theranos to distribute its testing services. If Walgreens doesn’t expand its partnership with Theranos, the company would have to “start selling in physicians’ offices or establish a separate collection network”, a move that would “likely need a lot more capital”, Piper Jaffray analyst William Quirk told the WSJ.

We’ve reached out to Walgreens and Theranos for comment, and we’ll update when we hear back.

Walgreens had been planning to increase its health and wellness offerings with the expansion of in-house bloodwork center Theranos.

“We note that Ms. Holmes sought to challenge the reliability of our sources, but it remains the fact that she doesn’t know from whom the information for our articles was gathered”, the news provider went on to say.

Theranos is in fully fledged damage-control mode, continuing to assert that the Journal article had factual errors and mischaracterized the company’s technology.