There are entire journals that are devoted to peer-reviewed articles in this technology (microfluidics for healthcare). The concept “lab-on-a-chip is sound.

Think about it, she took like a year of college and then quit There are universities who have been developing these technologies for a couple decades now. But it seems the well is poisoned for a while.

... but not for the number and type of tests she was targeting for a single drop of blood.

They weren't making fast enough progress to meet the targets they had set, and resorted to fraud as a result, gaming results, obfuscating what technology was actually being used, etc. They had other problems, such as poor lab quality control and rampant employee turnover. (I tried for a few chapters to keep all the characters straight, then realized that most of them would be gone by the next chapter.) I think the book focused on what happened based on what they did do, not what would have been theoretically possible if they had approached things differently, and were different people.

made progress. But at the time the tech didn’t exist and she went ahead anyway assuming she could sew the parachute while falling out of the plane. She couldn’t.