Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

billiontoone.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 247 posts

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#31

Post by dvdt »

ipsum2 wrote: post #15
dvdt wrote: post #2

I'm the co-founder and CTO at BillionToOne. I'm happy to answer any questions here. I've also posted a slightly more technical explanation of how the test works and why it can scale here: https://twitter.com/dtsao/status/1247642005510873088?s=21 Edit: Since our site seems to be overwhelmed at the moment, here's a recap: We’ve been working hard at BillionToOne on a new COVID-19 test that scales testing to everyone in…

Thanks for the link to the scientific manuscript. Can you speak more about the machine learning aspect? Best of luck on getting FDA approval.

"When you’re fundraising, it’s AI When you’re hiring, it’s ML When you’re implementing, it’s linear regression"

The core of our machine learning is Ax=b :grins:

More seriously, the main reason why traditional sanger sequencing can't be used for COVID-19 testing is because it would be unclear whether a lack of signal is truly due to lack of virus, or if it is just because the assay failed (happens all the time!)

What we've done is introduce a reference sequencing signal that is biochemically very similar to viral RNA, but produces a distinct vector of electrical signals that is different from the signals emitted by viral RNA. Since we know what both the reference and viral signals look like, we can perform linear regression analysis to fit the linear combination of viral and reference signals that best match our data.

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#33

Post by zepto »

petertodd wrote: post #28
zepto wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dismissing the value of serological testing seems like a self-serving move. Such tests are immediately of very high value because they allow us to understand immunity to Covid-19, and to actually validate the estimates of cases amongst those who haven’t sought treatment. These are both of huge value regardless of the percentage of the US population estimate to have previously contracted Covid-19. By all means market…

Part of the problem with serological testing is false positives. I'm no expert, but my understanding is that the tests available may have false positive rates on the order of 0.5% to 2% If only 1% are infected, and the false positive rate is 1%, it's quite hard to determine what the test result actually means. On the other hand, some places like New York City are already at 0.7% per-capita known positives, and they'r…

Yes, which is why a better serological test would be extremely useful, the sooner the better. In no way does this undermine the value of BillionToOne’s test, but it is irresponsible for their CEO to be saying that serological tests are not useful yet when they are.

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#35

Post by billiontoone »

zepto wrote: post #20
dvdt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for letting me know about the site! This is a test to see if someone has a current COVID-19 infection. The antibody tests (serological) tests are also important, but since it is estimated that only ~1% of the US has previously contracted COVID-19, it will be a while before serological testing becomes useful at a population level. Our initial data show no false-positives and no false-negatives out of all specim…

Dismissing the value of serological testing seems like a self-serving move. Such tests are immediately of very high value because they allow us to understand immunity to Covid-19, and to actually validate the estimates of cases amongst those who haven’t sought treatment. These are both of huge value regardless of the percentage of the US population estimate to have previously contracted Covid-19. By all means market…

I don't think we are in any way undervaluing the serological tests. A great serological test would be very useful. However, because of the indirect measurement, they tend not to be very sensitive or specific, so it is fair to say that they become more important not at the peak of the pandemic but at the post-pandemic period.

By the way, as a company, we really don't have much to gain from this test. If it does not get adopted, we'll go back to building our core business which has been growing 100% quarter over quarter. We have poured resources into the current development, because it is the right thing to do. No investor in our Series B round will take into account any non-recurring sell-almost-at-cost revenues that we get from a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#36

Post by dang »

dvdt wrote: post #31
ipsum2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link to the scientific manuscript. Can you speak more about the machine learning aspect? Best of luck on getting FDA approval.

"When you’re fundraising, it’s AI When you’re hiring, it’s ML When you’re implementing, it’s linear regression" The core of our machine learning is Ax=b :grins: More seriously, the main reason why traditional sanger sequencing can't be used for COVID-19 testing is because it would be unclear whether a lack of signal is truly due to lack of virus, or if it is just because the assay failed (happens all the time!) What…

For HN it's better to drop the fundraising language and use the implementing language, so I've s/machine learning/linear regression/'d your text above.

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#37

Post by cheriot »

This would be HUGE. Not only has the testing capacity in America been maxed out, but the % of positive results has been more than 20% and trending upward. In order to quarantine effectively (read: end the shut down) we need to test the family, coworkers, and contacts of every positive result.

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#38

Post by dang »

lvs wrote: post #23
dang wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since people seem to be reacting to the word "unlocking" in the title, I've replaced it with "working on".

Thanks. Make him explain whether the machine learning is real too, since his linked manuscript doesn't say anything about it. This is a really exploitative moment to be hyping things.

It looks like David answered that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22808525. I agree that it's better not to use buzzwords, and have edited the top text to say "linear regression" instead of "machine learning".

(This is actually part of the standard advice we give to YC startups who are launching on HN: don't talk like you would to investors—talk as you do to fellow implementors.)

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#39

Post by svara »

ipsum2 wrote: post #15
dvdt wrote: post #2

I'm the co-founder and CTO at BillionToOne. I'm happy to answer any questions here. I've also posted a slightly more technical explanation of how the test works and why it can scale here: https://twitter.com/dtsao/status/1247642005510873088?s=21 Edit: Since our site seems to be overwhelmed at the moment, here's a recap: We’ve been working hard at BillionToOne on a new COVID-19 test that scales testing to everyone in…

Thanks for the link to the scientific manuscript. Can you speak more about the machine learning aspect? Best of luck on getting FDA approval.

They get basically two superimposed chromatograms from Sanger sequencing, one from the control and one from the patient sample. They need to sort out which chromatogram peak belongs to which and calculate the relative abundance of the sequences in the sample from the relative peak intensities.

The machine learning angle isn't the exciting part here, it's all the rest. Great idea!

Re: We’re working on 1M Covid-19 testing capacity per day

#40

Post by thoraway1010 »

Scaling a static website involves far less technical knowledge than scaling a high politics / moderate complexity scientific process.

The website looks terribly designed from a scaling standpoint. Have you run even a basic google pagespeed on it? Why no cache TTL on the custom TrueType font? Why no CDN backing?

This is a bit random, but if you have a "proud" web developer who "knows best" find someone with no pride who can get this sort of thing done.

We believe google can scale in part because they seem to be able return web search / autocomplate / google assistant responses pretty quickly.

Post reply on HN