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Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

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Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#31

Post by usrusr »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #18
gpderetta wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't current testing machines have much, much higher throughput? Like in the thousands of tests per day? It seems the advantage of this new device is latency. Of course if they are cheap enough and easy to use that you can buy thousands of them and distribute to all hospitals then might also increase total throughput.

It’s a really small device as far as I understand, so you could use it in a small practice or even on the go (?). This can be an advantage as most of the lab systems weigh several tons and take up a lot of floor space, hence you can never use them in a decentralized setting.

The intersection between moneyedness and remoteness. The more I think about it the more I suspect that the pilot market for this class of device would be the sick bay of a yacht that has its own Wikipedia page. Which is fine, but surely nothing that will have a meaningful impact on our general understanding of the epidemic.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#32

Post by fabian2k »

gpderetta wrote: post #15
ThePhysicist wrote: post #10

Sounds really impressive, but writing "1,000 tests per day with just 100 devivces" is really marketing BS I think. They should've just written "10 tests per day per device".

Don't current testing machines have much, much higher throughput? Like in the thousands of tests per day? It seems the advantage of this new device is latency. Of course if they are cheap enough and easy to use that you can buy thousands of them and distribute to all hospitals then might also increase total throughput.

https://www.bosch-vivalytic.com/en/product/vivalytic-tests/v...

That describes how this particular test works. It's a small device with self-contained cartridges, so it's designed to be used outside a lab and doesn't require experts to operate. But as far as I can see, it only processes a single sample at a time. A typical PCR setup in the lab can handle 96 reactions at a time, though you also need controls there which I assume are built in the cartridge in some way in this test. And then there are the big automated systems.

I think the benefit of this device here is only present if you already have one, it's not a way to seriously scale up testing as a whole unless these devices are very widely used already.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#33

Post by khjklehti »

gpderetta wrote: post #15
ThePhysicist wrote: post #10

Sounds really impressive, but writing "1,000 tests per day with just 100 devivces" is really marketing BS I think. They should've just written "10 tests per day per device".

Don't current testing machines have much, much higher throughput? Like in the thousands of tests per day? It seems the advantage of this new device is latency. Of course if they are cheap enough and easy to use that you can buy thousands of them and distribute to all hospitals then might also increase total throughput.

Current machines test large batches at a time. You need to wait until you fill a batch, otherwise you waste valuable reagents.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#34

Post by blompa »

lmedinas wrote: post #9
ginko wrote: post #6

> Up to 1,000 tests per day on just 100 devices So.. 10 tests per day per device? That doesn't sound THAT impressive.

"(...)the rapid test can detect a SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection in patients in under two and a half hours" (...)With the tests currently in use, patients must usually wait one to two days for a result." Well i see here a big improvement...

The thing is though, the current PCR-based tests can be parallelised, with hundreds being run at the same time, taking just a couple of hours.

The biggest waiting time comes from logistics with transportation to the labs, which is where the Bosch test is advantageous.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#35

Post by mehrdadn »

guillem_lefait wrote: post #13
ginko wrote: post #6

> Up to 1,000 tests per day on just 100 devices So.. 10 tests per day per device? That doesn't sound THAT impressive.

"under two and a half hours" per test. To be able to make 10 tests per day, you'll probably can't have any delay between tests : 1 day = 10 x (2 hours + 24minutes). If accuracy is an issue, why not doing a two pass procedure ? 1) test quick and cheap 2) if results have low confidence, move to longer/more reliable testing method

That approach makes sense for when you want a low false positive rate, i.e. when the treatment is dangerous or expensive (so you want to avoid it at all costs if it's unnecessary). Here, it's the other way around. Treatment is benign (stay at home unless it becomes an emergency), but a false negative is expensive (you'd infect lots of others). What cheap test do you know that can have a low false negative rate? The only one I know is the one that flags everyone as infected.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#37

Post by PierceJoy »

lmedinas wrote: post #9
ginko wrote: post #6

> Up to 1,000 tests per day on just 100 devices So.. 10 tests per day per device? That doesn't sound THAT impressive.

"(...)the rapid test can detect a SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection in patients in under two and a half hours" (...)With the tests currently in use, patients must usually wait one to two days for a result." Well i see here a big improvement...

> With the tests currently in use, patients must usually wait one to two days for a result.

Is that because it takes 2 days for the test to complete, or because there a 2 day delay from backlog + administrative time?

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#38

Post by prox »

microtonal wrote: post #17
prox wrote: post #5

It’s good to see solutions for testing are coming. This test by Singapore a*star nanobiolab can test in 5 minutes : https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/singapore-scie...

Besides comparing times, I guess the accuracies or FP/FN rates are also important. The linked article states 95% accuracy for the Bosch test. Are there any numbers for the 5-minute test?

It only states high sensitivity and accuracy, you might find actual data on the a*star nanobiolab website.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#39

Post by blompa »

microtonal wrote: post #17
prox wrote: post #5

It’s good to see solutions for testing are coming. This test by Singapore a*star nanobiolab can test in 5 minutes : https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/singapore-scie...

Besides comparing times, I guess the accuracies or FP/FN rates are also important. The linked article states 95% accuracy for the Bosch test. Are there any numbers for the 5-minute test?

This article [0] suggests that false negative results will not be as problematic if we manage to start screening on a population level.

Inaccuracy of up to 15% could still keep the viral R0 under 1.0 (the critical value for eliminating an epidemic).

From the article:

> "False negative rates up to 15% could be tolerated if 80% comply with testing, and false positives can be almost arbitrarily high when a high fraction of the population is already effectively quarantined"

https://medium.com/@sten.linnarsson/to-stop-covid-19-test-ev...

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#40

Post by dom_hutton »

gfosco wrote: post #24
diggan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full quote is "A Bosch Vivalytic analyzer can perform up to ten tests in the space of 24 hours. This means it takes just 100 devices to evaluate up to 1,000 tests per day." which makes more sense, the 100 devices is just an example. But I agree that it's largely unnecessary, the initial "up to ten tests per day" would have been enough.

The full quote does one extra thing, it implies that buying 100+ of these machines is totally expected.

Is this marketing?
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