Benefits
There are a number of advantages to pooling samples, some of them are:
Higher throughput: we can test ~8x as many patients with the same resources
You have all you need: it does not require any new equipment, reagents or prep methods
Faster diagnosis for most: most people diagnose faster (on average).
Uses less reagent than the traditional method (fewer PCR runs and wells used to diagnosis)
Easy to use: just visit a website with instructions
Constraints
This protocol works best when two conditions are fulfilled:
The probability of a patient testing positive is small, i.e. less than approximately 25%. Beyond that number, this process will introduce a large amount of variability for little gain. If the probability is small however, ~5%, this protocol can be over 8x as effective as the standard method.
The number of patients to test are large. The method will significantly increase the throughput of one PCR machine, but only if the number of patients greatly exceeds the number of PCR wells that are available at a time.
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Sensitive and Specific Tests
Desired Sensitivity and specificity is configurable
Bayesian statistics are used to classify samples only once the desired accuracy is reached.
Automatic Replicates
Replicates are dynamically run to reach desired specificity
Errors are tracked for each sample and replicated if necessary
Positive and Negative Controls
A customizable number of positive and negative controls
Controls can be randomised, or in a dedicated well
Integrates with Existing Lab Processes
Liquid Handling Robot Support
Suppport for many robot file formats
Manual input supported with printable protocols
Programmatic Results Input
Support for standard rt-PCR file outputs
Manual override available at all steps
Add New Samples at Any Time
Samples can be added even after the experiment has started
The software will prioritise older samples to reduce latency