Philip Pacheco/Getty Images
- Elizabeth Holmes told The New York Times she still believes Theranos could have worked.
- Holmes, now awaiting the start of her 11-year prison sentence, gave several interviews to the Times.
- She also said she plans to work on healthcare-related inventions while in jail for fraud.
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes said she still believes her fallen company could have changed the modern healthcare industry if it didn't attract so much attention so quickly.
In her first time speaking to the media since 2016, Holmes shares her mindset in a new profile in the New York Times detailing her continued fight against her conviction on fraud charges and efforts to delay the start of her 11-year prison sentence.
"We would've seen through our vision," Holmes told the Times, in response to a question about what she thinks would have happened if her company hadn't initially received so much buzz.
Holmes — who is currently living with her partner Billy Evans and their two children as her legal battles continue to play out — told the Times' Amy Chozick that she still wants to, and believes she can, change healthcare, and continues to work on new inventions to this day.
"I still dream about being able to contribute in that space," Holmes told the Times. "I still feel the same calling to it as I always did and I still think the need is there."
She told the Times that she plans to continue working on healthcare innovations, including new ideas for COVID-19 testing, during her time in prison.
"If your head is exploding at how divorced from reality this sounds, that's kind of the point," Chozick wrote, noting Holmes seems to still maintain the same "idealistic delusion" that led to the events at Theranos that ended with her guilty conviction in the first place.
Chozick spoke to Holmes, Evans, as well as Holmes' family and friends, who shared the writer's impression that Holmes appears to believe the things she says. However, some of Holmes' friends cautioned the reporter against fully believing her claims.
Holmes was charged with fraud after a 2015 report from The Wall Street Journal led to investigations into whether the Theranos technology was actually capable of detecting dozens of health issues from a single prick of blood as she promised it would be.
One of Holmes' attorneys did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on Sunday morning.