Live data from Hacker News

Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

bosch.com

181–190 of 190 posts

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#183
post #98

This is not rapid, only 10 tests/day, whilst the current overly slow sequencers can do 200/day. The accuracy of 5% is also worse than other faster sequencers of 3%. And compare that to modern ThermalFischer parallel PCR sequencers, which operate in realtime, 25 tests in parallel, for 2.500€. That's a factor of 1000. With 10 modern sequencers per city you could test 10.000 per day, eg with drive-in. https://www.thermo…

In addition to all information above this test is able to detect antibodies only not virus. So it is not recommended tests by WHO. This test is only useful in the later part of infection by the time which patient might have in contact with others thus spreading the disease. We need tests which can detect single of very few virus particle in the early stage of infection and that will help to quarantine the patient thu…

I believe that line in the Q&A is referring to the "other COVID-19 tests, where the test result is available in a few minutes". It's ambiguous and confusingly phrased, but it seems like Bosch directly detecting the pathogen, in contrast to other rapid tests (which don't, presumably, use PCR, as that takes longer than "a few minutes").

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#184
There's already a 45-minute rtPCR test from Cepheid and a simple 10 minute ELISA test from SureScreen (which serves a different need, antibody detection rather than infection detection).

It doesn't appear to have an FDA EUA so it may not be immediately usable in the US.

The user-friendly UX and compact size seem good.

The cycle time seems to be on the slow side when minutes count in an ER / ICU situation. ~9 tests per day per machine seems slow, costly and likely to occupy a lot of space for the machines and the cartridges (which contain reagents that have to be kept chilled).

This seems overall like a timely product to solve immediate needs. It could've been better but it was designed quickly.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accuracy = (Sensitivity + Specificity) / 2. The measure does sometimes get used when discussing diagnostic tests - for an example from psychology/psychiatry see https://insar.confex.com/insar/2019/webprogram/Paper29391.ht...

No, accuracy is the same here it is for any binary classification. accuracy = (true positives + true negatives) / all samples. A largely useless measure. As a single score F1 score is much better, but sensitivity and specifity are specified separately for good reason. It makes napking math much easier, for one thing.

What confused me is there are actually two definitions of accuracy.

Accuracy: ACC = (TP+TN)/(P+N)

Balanced Accuracy: BA = (TPR+TNR)/2

The definition I gave is the second not the first. You are probably correct that the conference abstract I linked to is using it in the first sense not the second. (I'm not 100% sure though.)

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Confusion_matrix_term...

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#186
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't we optimize for a higher number of false positives? In the end, sending someone in quarantine for 2 weeks without them being infected is probably less dangerous than a false negative. So making tests overly sensitive would seem more applicable to me here.

If you're quarantining a large number of medics then that's potentially serious and possibly more dangerous overall if your numbers are off.

You could administer two tests for those, I believe that's what's already done.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#187
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Give people at-least some credit... :) It doesn't work like you think at all. We buy lots of high end equipment for our vaccine research/manufacturing, including PCR machines. Nobody in biotech opens up their wallet for high-ticket items based on a few words on a website. They have to actually demonstrate that it does what you want. We demand application notes, papers, data, industry references, the works. Before a p…

I'll refer you to what your sibling said:

"It even works on people who fully understand it and think they are above it."

> Nobody in biotech opens up their wallet for high-ticket items based on a few words on a website.

Sure, but that doesn't mean the wording has no effect.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#188
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only trying to point out that Bosch may have specifically chosen the term 'accuracy' instead of 'specificity' or 'sensitivity', which don't translate easily outside of the Anglo-sphere, and in my opinion your thread is a valid example of why those two terms don't get used to market this device, which is what kicked this thread off in the first place ..

It is more likely that they were trying do deliberatly write a vague statement, their (native) German announcement uses the same "Genauigkeit", instead of the relevant terms "Sensitivität" and "Spezifizität".

Bosch sells its releases in 100's of different countries. I'm not saying they weren't using inaccurate terminology intentionally, more that there are indeed some guidelines for how things are couched in releases of this nature and one of those guidelines is translatability.

Especially apropos life-support systems where, indeed, RTFM||die is a thing.

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#189
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give people at-least some credit... :) It doesn't work like you think at all. We buy lots of high end equipment for our vaccine research/manufacturing, including PCR machines. Nobody in biotech opens up their wallet for high-ticket items based on a few words on a website. They have to actually demonstrate that it does what you want. We demand application notes, papers, data, industry references, the works. Before a p…

I'll refer you to what your sibling said: "It even works on people who fully understand it and think they are above it." > Nobody in biotech opens up their wallet for high-ticket items based on a few words on a website. Sure, but that doesn't mean the wording has no effect.

I don't understand your comment. Are you presenting an opinion of your own that you want me to respond to?

Re: Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly not $1K! BTW, at current U.S. hospital billing levels, $1K buys you a small bottle of Tylenol. Think big, my friend!

Sorry, German source only, but reportedly: Device is 15.000€ and a single cartridge runs between 50 and 100€ [0]. [0]: https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/industrie/pandemie-...

That makes sense. There seems to be a better option available in the U.S.: Abbott ID NOW, which produces results in 5 to 13 minutes. The cost was $8K before the acquisition of Alere by Abbott: https://serfinitymedical.com/products/id-now-instrument-us-a...
Post reply on HN