Article by Emma McLaren (the cute one)

Growing up, my sister was known as the smart sister and me the cute one. Now while my sister is undoubtedly charming and cute at times and I have brains – she continues to prove this sisterly character allocation on a regular basis. This past week she hit a high note for sure when Bill Nye the Science Guy, a childhood hero of ours, chose her to talk to about the who, what, where, and when of COVID testing on his Podcast.

My sister, Dr. Zoe McLaren, has been contributing and writing countless articles, sparking viral twitter conversations, and giving interviews over the last several months on a number of COVID topics but particularly testing. She is a public health economist and looks at public policy rather than the medicine of the disease – a far more interesting take on the virus in my opinion. And she makes it easy to understand and even, dare I say, fun. I mean Bill Nye thought she was great!  

As a serial entrepreneur, I can’t help but take what she has said from an academic stand-point and imagine a business or initiative – hence the” Food Truck” Model to testing COVID. This is what we need, but it is not exactly the food truck model that currently exists.  According to my sister, we need kiosks around town so you can stop by once or twice a week to get tested – not on demand but convenient and readily accessible. We also don’t need daily at-home testing; not only does it have a ton of red tape associated with it, but is also costly and possibly unnecessary. 

And my business mind went nuts – what about unmanned automatic kiosks where you step up to the door, show your QR Code and enter the small photo booth like structure to take the test? Then you punch in your details, get the subscription-based test that you chose from one of the multiple testing kits, and wait for the results while watching Netflix. When it is all over you get a text message and a print out with the date and time of the test and the results. And the kiosk, it is sanitized with an ultraviolet light like from Aeroasis ready for the next person.

Can you see it too? So here’s my call to action to my Santa Cruz Works community: If you have been waiting for an idea and a time to step up and contribute to the pandemic here it is. I even have branding for you: Zoe: the smart sister’s solution to COVID Testing.

If you want to get intelligent insight into COVID, social distancing, where we are at with testing follow my sister, Dr. Zoe McLaren, on Twitter.

Check out Zoe’s article in Fast Company: The key to stopping the coronavirus spread are new tests that prioritize speed over accuracy