Cue – Discover yourself

https://cue.me

by cfontes • 12 years ago

54 32 12 years ago

cue.me

jonny_eh• 12 years ago

Green smoothies? Gross.

Instead of stock photos of people running, it'd be great if they laid out the specific features/sensors of this thing.

tptacek3• 12 years ago

They claim:

* Inflammation

* Influenza

* Vitamin D

* Fertility

* Testosterone

It's unclear from the media photos on the front page, but this is something that stays in your home, and accepts sample swabs for blood and spit (you buy different swabs for different tests).

This was a really useful comment, linked from upthread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7744251

tptacek3• 12 years ago

This seems... ambitious. The prospects for reliable home flu testing alone seem challenging; for instance, here's WBUR reporting on an NSF-funded, CDC-advised pilot to get home flu tests to Boston residents:

http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2014/01/home-flu-test-goviral

The "good" version of the test requires an offsite lab.

Also: if you have a product that detects influenza and fertility, why lead off your marketing with "inflammation" and recommendations for green smoothies? It's hard to tell whether this is a serious product or something for people who shop at GNC.

The founders have math backgrounds but no biotech pedigree, although they do have a gold-plated advisor board.

tjohns2• 12 years ago

This has shown up on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743036

That said, "inflammation is elevated, recover with a green smoothie" seems like questionable medical advice. I pretty much gave up on this right there.

tedks2• 12 years ago

Their core competency is building sensor systems, not delivering medical advice. If you know you're more inflamed, that's useful information in itself.

tptacek3• 12 years ago

In the thread I linked down downthread, a physician questioned the utility of the inflammation marker they're testing.

tjohns2• 12 years ago

I'm not entirely sure it's useful. At least not in a home context.

Elevated inflammation could be a sign of something like arthritis, cancer, crohn's disease, a heart attack, or a dozen other serious things... or you could just have a mild bacterial infection that will resolve on its own... or you might have just gotten back from the gym.

I've never had a doctor test for inflammation markers unless there's something else noticeably wrong and they're trying to perform a differential diagnosis. It's just not something that you'd want to routinely test for, let alone know how to interpret in a meaningful way.

And summing all of that up into "drink a green smoothie" doesn't help anyone. That smoothie isn't going cure a bacterial infection. (But it might sell your product to health conscious consumers who don't know better.)

Edit: Which isn't to say that certain data can't be useful. Cholesterol, glucose, blood pressure, weight... these are things that serve as good general indicators of health and are worth frequent monitoring.

dang• 12 years ago

Thanks. Since the story has had significant attention in the last year, this counts as a dupe. (See the FAQ for a description of this.)

We sometimes make exceptions if the product has undergone a major state change, such as being launched. But I don't see that here.

beeskneecaps• 12 years ago

Now if they would only promise not to sell off your personal health data.

Call me skeptical, but there has to be some negative consequence for giving this kind of personal info out in the future.

I imagine it being like, "Sorry sir, your health record indicates you were sick 5 times last year. You're a health risk, so we can't hire you".

"Your elevated testosterone levels indicate that you'll be an overly-aggressive employee.."

Anywho... Cool video, right?

rmxt• 12 years ago

My thoughts immediately strayed to the same notion. From the FAQ, however:

Your data will be stored on your phone, and you decide how long you want to store your data, if at all. You are the only person that has access to your data. You can choose to share the data with your doctor, your family, or your friends. You are in control of your data, and how you use it is entirely up to you.

As a first customer, you will be invited to take part in a usability study and provide feedback and anonymized data to our company as an important part of Cue’s path to FDA approval. You may opt out of this at any time.

And, with respect to selling:

Absolutely not. Your data belongs to you. Data collected using Cue machines are linked to your smart phone solely. Again, you are the only person that has access to your data.

Yes, yes, TOS and privacy policies can change at any time, but this is a quite bit more forthright statement about data, than say the Microsoft Band/Strava/Fitbit/etc. My reading of it is that it's never uploaded to any sort of remote cloud storage.

EDIT: The more that I think about it, and the more features that I see that the app has, I'd have to guess that there may be some sort of catch down the line in the above statement. Perhaps your blood work data is never transferred to their servers, but analytic gathering is probably going to take place based on your location, meal planning, exercise records, etc., even if only for "recommendations for you".

legohead• 12 years ago

This page is a lot more clear about the product I think: https://cue.me/product

I still see no information on how long the "wand" (sample taker) lasts.. Can I take 10 drops of blood? 100? Infinite?

ultrafez2• 12 years ago

The sample wands and cartridges are single use - see the FAQ page: https://cue.me/faq

suprgeek• 12 years ago

The concept itself is pretty exciting - A simple home based device capable of providing some bio markers that indicate different conditions.

The science behind these - i.e. the correlation of said marker with the linked condition is not as cut-and-dry but still within the bounds of usefulness.

The execution is something we will have to see - the many 3D renders are not exactly promising

The Web site is an abomination - terrible scroll hijacking, Stock pictures of Gross things, low info density, etc, etc

bshimmin• 12 years ago

Regarding the latter, you can add awful flickering animations to the laundry list of horribleness.

The site annoyed me so much I didn't even stick around to find out what it was offering. Truly dreadful.

jgv• 12 years ago

Came here to say just this. Product could be interesting but their abomination of a website is such a turn off.

calebm• 12 years ago

This looks awesome. It seems ridiculous that in the age of information, we still need to go to labs to get our own basic vital information.

innguest• 12 years ago

While it's cute to think that way, the truth is you have the government to blame for regulating medical equipment.

jguimont• 12 years ago

They even invented medication for the flu!

ultrafez2• 12 years ago

I thought that was questionable too. Why was there a prescription to pick up to treat a viral infection, which there is no treatment for?

Domenic_S• 12 years ago

orly? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amantadine

mbreese• 12 years ago

There is something to be said for keeping track of your health, but with too much monitoring (without an external reason), you're just generating too much data and will end up with false positives. They need to make a much better case for why I would want to monitor these things...

JimA• 12 years ago

I admit I LOL'd at the fertility test...

djrogers• 12 years ago

Why the LOL? Fertility tests are a perfectly valid and useful thing for those struggling to get pregnant.

fasteo2• 12 years ago

A 5-pack of inflammation, vitamin D, fertility, or testosterone cartridges costs $20/pack. A 3-pack of flu cartridges costs $30.

Pricey

VoiceOfWisdom• 12 years ago

A private blood test that reports total serum testosterone costs between 50-100 dollars, and requires going into a lab to get blood drawn. If the cue is accurate this it will be ridiculously better.

fasteo2• 12 years ago

That's true, but the motivations here are quite different. I wouldn't go to a lab just to check if I am properly recovered from a workout [1] or to check if the kids have the flu.

[1] that's assuming that a free testosterone test can tell you that.

phmagic• 12 years ago

All the people shown in the video didn't need cue. Why don't they show moms with sick kids, the elderly, or those stricken with diseases?

knappador• 12 years ago

I'll just wait on Integrated Plasmonics to ship something. Cue might have fit some market with existing tech, but it looks pretty niche. "Deep" monitoring...and then testosterone. Wonderful. I'll know if lifting weights really affects testosterone levels while completely missing that prostate cancer on the way. We have deep testing. We don't have broad or cheap testing. The fact that the tests aren't cheap, (fertility???) and the marketing strikes me as pretending existing things are new makes me think this is investment fodder. I didn't wake up today decided to be negative. The product gives me signals that seem to betray a lack of sincerity in terms of delivering anything with truly new value propositions.

at-fates-hands• 12 years ago

A lot of this stuff seems rather obvious.

Vitamin D low? Pretty sure people know whether they should be more active. If I'm sitting at a PC all day (like most developers) I know when my activity levels are low, I don't need a machine to tell me that.

Inflammation? I've been an athlete my whole life, so I'm pretty tuned into my body. If I have inflammation somewhere, and it's not sports related, I'll most likely leave that to a trained professional, not some machine.

Influenza? See above. If I get really sick, I got to the doctor. Since there's really no pill you can take to cure you of the flu (it's a virus), by the time I'd check this machine, I'd be better off just seeing my doctor, which is most likely a worst case scenario.

Testosterone? I'm an athlete by trade and have never had any issues with this. I have a healthy diet and am still very active for my age. Not sure this would help me other than to confirm I have normal levels; something I can find out at my yearly physical if I really want to.

Fertility? Not even going to go there.

Basically if you're a couch potato, and have a shit diet, this might be helpful to you. The vast majority of people I know who smoke and have a crappy lifestyle and diet, they know it. It's just up to them to make the change. Not sure this machine would get them to do that.

cwkoss• 12 years ago

Horrible website. I don't want to watch a video, and couldn't figure out what it was from the text on the page.

tenpoundhammer• 12 years ago

I can’t imagine how this company won’t get sued out of existence. They are making some pretty broad and probably inaccurate statements, and also offering medical advice.

Detecting inflammation probably isn’t that hard, but I’d bet they are detecting a particular marker of inflammation and reporting that as inflammation. Which could be meaningful in combination with other factors, or it could mean the person being tested has a cold, or ate a 12 inch Subway Sandwich.

Also advising someone to drink a green smoothie may lower the particular marker they are measuring, but probably won’t alleviate actual inflammation or it’s related symptoms at all.

My wife has had a chronic inflammatory disease for years and has tried it all, including smoothies, and has find even really powerful anti-inflammatory drugs don’t cure the inflammation or remove all symptoms.

I do like the idea of the device and applications though, but I’m really worried about the way they present information.

Cue – Discover yourself

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