The question is how Abaxis should make itself ready for this brave new world.
That same year the war in Iraq began and gave a lift to Abaxis.
Meantime, Abaxis found itself engaged in a mortal struggle with Idexx Laboratories of Westbrook, Me.
The last year and a half should have been a sweet time for Abaxis.
Stroy rejected the idea, arguing that if Abaxis wasn't a one-step process, doctors wouldn't buy it.
In 1998 a mutual fund manager told Severson that Abaxis had only narrowly dodged a death trap.
Abaxis has the potential to become a prodigious disruptive technology, changing the nature and delivery of diagnostic medicine.
For one thing, Abaxis has to request a CLIA waiver on licensing each time it develops a new application.
Abaxis had occasional success at getting picked up by distributors but claims it would then get bounced out by Idexx.
One initial project Nguyen worked on was developing his own financial model to predict earnings for companies, one of which was Abaxis.
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Nguyen, who pleaded guilty last June, said that he received confidential financial information (quarterly earnings) on Abaxis, Inc from an employee of the company.
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Stuck with cool technology but virtually no market, Abaxis realized it could avoid both problems by selling the device to veterinarians, an unregulated market.
But in the past five years Abaxis has bolted forward, its sales expanding at a 23% annual clip, its earnings per share an astonishing 94%.
Severson quickly realized that Abaxis was running out of money again.
Abaxis still didn't have the right reagent beads for human tests.
Severson, yet to join Abaxis, believes this decision saved the company.
Abaxis was founded in 1989 by a trio of ambitious scientists.
Severson and his direct sales force tried to pick off customers one by one, shipping old Idexx machines they replaced to Abaxis headquarters, where they piled up in the "trophy room" on the factory floor.
Severson's Vetscan had superior technology, but Idexx had the advantage with veterinary distributors, who currently place machines with 14, 000 vets, compared with 7, 000 for Abaxis, which relies on those sales (and the 3 million discs) for 74% of annual revenue.
Once it gets in the physician's door, Abaxis has a relatively easy case to make: The Piccolo's results are quick and accurate, and internists and family doctors, who might use a half-dozen disks a day, can recoup their investments in a hurry.
The Piccolo takes 12.5 minutes to complete a reading, and delivers results (so says Abaxis) just as accurate as those done at labs run by giants Quest Diagnostics (nyse: DGX - news - people ) and Laboratory Corp. of America.
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