BERKELEY, Calif. — On a sunny Thursday morning, around 100 people sat on folding chairs beneath a lawn tent preparing to do a mass blood draw. Standing onstage with a tangle of morning glories as his backdrop, Robby Wade, CEO of at-home testing company Rythm Health, warned that the process might be a little chaotic given the size of the crowd.
Wade explained how to activate the heating pads by popping a small silver coin, prompting a chorus of admiring oohs from the audience as rays of warming crystallized gel spread like the sun. Within a few minutes, everyone, me included, had matching stick-on Tasso devices trickling blood from our upper arms into test tubes that promised to give insights into the health of our hormones, metabolisms, various organs, and biological age.
