from these norms—a notice would be given the user or
health professional to repeat the sampling. If the
significant difference persists on the retest, the device
using existing technology well known in the art, to contact
the physician, care center. [sic] pharma company or other
or all.
Please let me know next week if you could cover this.
Thx. RcfSchiavelli was busy with other matters and didn’t respond for
several months. Fuisz finally got his attention on January 11, 2006,
when he sent him another email saying he wanted to make a
modification to his original idea: the alert mechanism would now be “a
bar code or a radio tag label” on the package insert of the drug the
patient was taking. A chip in the blood-testing device would scan the
bar code and program the device to automatically send an alert to the
patient’s doctor if and when the patient’s blood showed side effects
from the drug.
Fuisz and Schiavelli exchanged more emails refining the concept,
culminating in a fourteen-page patent application they filed with the
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on April 24, 2006. The proposed
patent didn’t purport to invent groundbreaking new technology.
Rather, it combined existing ones—wireless data transmission,
computer chips, and bar codes—into a physician alert mechanism that
could be embedded in at-home blood-testing devices made by other
companies. It made no secret of which particular company it was
targeting: it mentioned Theranos by name in the fourth paragraph and
quoted from its website.
Patent applications don’t become public until eighteen months after
they’re filed, so neither Elizabeth nor her parents were initially aware
of what Fuisz had done. Lorraine Fuisz and Noel Holmes continued to
see each other regularly. The Holmeses settled into a new apartment
they purchased on Wisconsin Avenue near the Naval Observatory.
Lorraine drove over from McLean on several occasions and
accompanied Noel, clad in her jogging suit, on walks through the