Health Firm 'Grail' Wrongly Told Hundreds of People They Might Have Cancer (cbsnews.com) 27
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: A biotechnology company selling a $949 blood test that it bills as a "first of its kind" to detect cancer said it incorrectly informed about 400 customers that they might have the disease. The Menlo Park, California, company, called Grail, said it sent a form letter to some customers who had bought its Galleri test, which detects a marker for more than 50 types of cancer, "stating incorrectly that a cancer signal was detected," a company spokeswoman told CBS MoneyWatch in a statement. The company blamed a vendor, PWN Health, for the error, citing a "software configuration issue."
In a statement, PWN Health said it said the problem was due to "a misconfiguration of our patient engagement platform used to send templated communications to individuals." It added that it has added processes to make sure such a mistake doesn't occur again, and started contacting the people who received the erroneous letters within 36 hours. The error comes amid an increased demand for health care screening tests, especially for chronic diseases such as cancer.
Grail is billing its service as a complement to routine single-cancer tests for diseases such as colon or breast cancer, and said that the blood test can detect forms of the disease that aren't routinely screened for, such as in the gallbladder and pancreas. Grail said it hasn't received reports of patient harm or "adverse events" due to the erroneous letters. "After being notified of the incident, Grail immediately began outreach by phone or email to all individuals who received the PWNHealth letter, and we continued our efforts until we confirmed we successfully reached each individual via phone, email or letter," the spokeswoman said. "The issue was in no way related to or caused by an incorrect Galleri laboratory test result."
More than half the erroneous letters were sent to customers who hadn't had their blood drawn yet for the Galleri test, the spokeswoman added.
On Monday, Illumina filed an appeal against a FTC order, "demanding that it divest cancer diagnostic test maker Grail over competition concerns in the U.S. market for cancer tests," reports Reuters. According to the filing, Illumina is arguing that the FTC "violated due process by depriving Illumina and Grail of a fair proceeding before an impartial tribunal."
In a statement, PWN Health said it said the problem was due to "a misconfiguration of our patient engagement platform used to send templated communications to individuals." It added that it has added processes to make sure such a mistake doesn't occur again, and started contacting the people who received the erroneous letters within 36 hours. The error comes amid an increased demand for health care screening tests, especially for chronic diseases such as cancer.
Grail is billing its service as a complement to routine single-cancer tests for diseases such as colon or breast cancer, and said that the blood test can detect forms of the disease that aren't routinely screened for, such as in the gallbladder and pancreas. Grail said it hasn't received reports of patient harm or "adverse events" due to the erroneous letters. "After being notified of the incident, Grail immediately began outreach by phone or email to all individuals who received the PWNHealth letter, and we continued our efforts until we confirmed we successfully reached each individual via phone, email or letter," the spokeswoman said. "The issue was in no way related to or caused by an incorrect Galleri laboratory test result."
More than half the erroneous letters were sent to customers who hadn't had their blood drawn yet for the Galleri test, the spokeswoman added.
On Monday, Illumina filed an appeal against a FTC order, "demanding that it divest cancer diagnostic test maker Grail over competition concerns in the U.S. market for cancer tests," reports Reuters. According to the filing, Illumina is arguing that the FTC "violated due process by depriving Illumina and Grail of a fair proceeding before an impartial tribunal."
History Might Not Repeat Itself (Score:5, Insightful)
But boy does it rhyme a lot.
Well, they might (Score:3)
That ain't no lie. Even I can say that to anybody and be correct.
Re: (Score:3)
I suspect a big part was when doctors decided to cash in their position as respected pinnacles of the community for a bigger paycheck.
If you're just in it for the money, the patient is just a customer, and who cares what they think of you? It's all downhill from there.
Wait ... (Score:1)
Did they use ChatGPT to draft the the letter though?
Sound like a pretty crappy offering (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean if you pay $1000 for a test and then get an automated form-letter that is wrong, that sounds like a scam to me. Apparently they do not even have some sort of plausibility check in what they send you.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not just some automated form letter. They very carefully asked ChatGPT "what's the most compassionate way to tell someone they have cancer?"
Re: (Score:2)
As, so it an automated form letter using non-sophisticated automation! That is infinitesimally better! (Relevant math joke: "Let epsilon be smaller than zero ...")
Some problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Here are some problems I would notice before I ever got my results, in order of increasing weirdness:
1. The company is called "Grail" - maybe not that weird, I guess it could be the founder's name or something, but it really sounds manufactured for hipness.
2. My cancer test is called "Galleri" - now my suspicions from point 1 are confirmed.
3. I'm getting my cancer test results through a "Patient engagement platform". What is that, some bot that says "Hi" to me over SMS?
I'm just getting "disengaged retards floating inside their own heads" vibes from this at every level. Accidentally sending off fake results to hundreds of people sounds completely in line with that. Congrats on vertically aligning your head up your synergized ass, I guess.
Re:Some problems (Score:4, Funny)
What... is your name? Sir Galleri.
What... is your quest? To seek the Grail.
Do.... I have cancer? Yes. Er, I mean no -- aaarrgh!
Re:Some problems (Score:4, Funny)
But you missed the coup de grace:
In other words, the customers got pwned.
Seems like ... (Score:5, Funny)
... they got PWN'd !!
Re: (Score:1)
But that's SOCIALISM, and the Angry People on TV told me that it's VERY BAD and SCARY.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, everyone would get this notice because we're all the customers of one company that has a monopoly with little incentive to do anything but the bare minimum. Socialism is capitalism wherein there's a single monopoly and a few politicians are the owner,
Re: (Score:2)
"This hypothetical situation that didn't happen is so much worse than our system in which it did happen, but hypothetically couldn't have happened"
Re:Thought experiment (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like the privatized health care trolls are out in force...and with mod points. With public health care, your physician makes the call about what tests you need rather than a greedy, profit-hungry insurance company, and then your doctor interprets those tests as part of your overall diagnosis and treatment. In what public health care system would a patient have to fork out a thousand bucks to some company they never heard of before for a test that should have been sent to and interpreted by their doctor?
So how is my comment "Off Topic"?
Under the headline: form letter error (Score:1)
And yet that's sufficient for this article to be filed under "science" and "medical" categories.
Remember when Slashdot's credo was "Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters"?
It's $949 (Score:3)
"Our $1,000 blood test indicated you MIGHT have cancer. We recommend you get a $4,000 scan/test to be sure."
The rest of the people that didn't test positive saved $3,000 each... unless of course they also have a lot of false negatives in addition to false positives... but those stats should be published with the response.
They chose... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Well played!
"they might have THE disease" (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: "they might have THE disease" (Score:1)
I don't know about... (Score:2)
...anybody else, but I'm use to getting PWNed by healthcare companies.