Late Monday afternoon, a few thousand clinical chemists packed into a cavernous convention hall in Philadelphia to hear a presentation by Elizabeth Holmes, the embattled CEO and founder of blood testing company Theranos. Her presentation, given in a controversial session of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry’s annual conference, was expected by many to be an opportunity for Holmes to finally reveal data that could back up the company’s lofty claims about its blood testing technology—technology now mired in scandal.

Last month, federal regulators revoked the company’s license to perform those blood tests, saying Theranos posed “immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety.” The company now faces lawsuits from ex-patients and a criminal probe for allegedly misleading investors on claims about its technology's performance. Federal regulators have banned Holmes from owning or operating a lab.

Yesterday’s presentation could have been the data-driven turning point Holmes has been promising. And the conference attendees—experts in clinical testing—gathered anxiously to hear the results.

But instead of validation studies of its existing technology, they got, essentially, a sales pitch for future technology.

Holmes spent her entire 45-minute time slot talking about a new blood testing device called the miniLab. Any questions about the company's old, disastrous blood testing device (the Edison) were flatly refused—even including questions about the differences between the Edison and miniLab.

“We know there’s a lot of questions about the past,” Holmes said in a heavily moderated question-and-answer session following her talk. “In the appropriate forum, we’ll address those. But today we’re hoping to be able to engage on a scientific exchange on this platform,” she said, referring to the miniLab. Holmes didn’t clarify what she meant by an appropriate forum or when data on old technology would be released.

Instead, Holmes presented preliminary data on the miniLab. Like the Edison, the miniLab is designed to perform a wide variety of types of tests on small volumes of blood from finger pricks rather than vein draws. That claim, which drew interest from clinicians performing plodding protocols and needle-wary patients alike, quickly earned Theranos fame and valuations as high as $9 billion years ago. Yet just like with the Edison, Theranos did not offer independent or peer-reviewed studies on the miniLab—once again bucking standard practices. And some of the data presented was collected from miniLab tests involving blood from vein draws rather than finger pricks.

Holmes repeatedly made the disclaimer that the facts and figures presented yesterday were “not intended to represent assay validation but rather the performance capabilities of the miniLab system.” Independent, peer-reviewed studies are in the works for the miniLab, Holmes said. And the tests would also need to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration before they could be used. The process could take years, as Theranos noted in a press release that went out during Holmes’ presentation.

While it's still unclear how tests run on the miniLab are improved from those on the Edison, one difference between the machines is that the miniLab is designed for automated testing. In other words, Theranos would no longer need to operate the machines running the blood tests, which it doesn't have the federal licensing to do. That change represents a business shift for Theranos from direct-to-consumer clinical testing to device manufacturing. But for the shift to save the floundering company, clinical chemists—like those in the audience yesterday—as well as hospitals and other healthcare facilities would need to be convinced that the miniLab works.

“The audience was intrigued by the science,” AACC President Patricia Jones told Ars afterward. “This doesn’t replace peer-review publication,” she said, but the presentation offers a “starting point.” The miniLab, according to Jones, builds on the Edison and is essentially based on old-school clinical lab techniques, but it's miniaturized and combined in one machine. It’s far from ready to be used for diagnosing patients, but she said it looks “pretty impressive.”

When asked if she was disappointed that Theranos hadn’t presented any data on the technology for which it has become infamous, Jones said no. “We asked them to present their technology and they presented their technology,” she said.

Jones acknowledged that the decision to have Holmes present at the conference and restrict questioning elicited criticism from some AACC members. In light of that pushback, Jones made efforts to distance the association from Theranos and suggested the talk was an opportunity for the AACC experts to vet the preliminary data for themselves. Yet, when she introduced Holmes at Monday’s presentation, Jones can be heard telling Holmes, “You are going to be awesome.” That feels like an unusual way to greet the head of a company that federal regulators sanctioned for potentially putting thousands of patients’ health and safety in jeopardy.

“If nothing else,” Jones said of Holmes’ presentation at the AACC conference, “it has raised some awareness of my profession.”

Theranos did not follow through with Ars' request for an interview. You can watch Holmes' entire presentation here.