Hello everyone,
what are some ideas for developing cheaper test kits (it can be PCR-based or others) for COVID-19 diagnostics?
For those experienced in such test kits development, what would be the major challenges in terms of cost and how to overcome it?
Any tips for cutting cost would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Make the COVID-19 diagnostic test cheaper by adopting the state's health care costs and choosing the best, cheapest, and most efficient test.
The cheaper kit can be made on the basis antigen-antibody reactions. This technique requires a number of samples available to the developers.
This issue needs future solutions and not instantaneous. If every country was able to establish a factory to produce the primers, master mix components and at least the spear apartments of PCR machine then the competition between companies would become severe and the price of diagnosis would become cheaper.
@Nadia Hasan Mohammed PCR consider as a gold standard in Covd19 diagnosis, however it is expensive. The battle now is about what make such a test efficient, cheep and reliable. Please have a look at this article which discusses the challenges
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/research/race-to-diagnose-covid-19-better-faster-and-cheaper-tests/amp/
Rate (cost) and weight once increased rarely decrease in this modern world.
Only way to decrease cost of lab tests for any disease is by producing indigenous test kits and machines produced in the country where tests are done.
check out LAMP and other isothermal amplification options. cheap alternative to qPCR, but quite often has some issues- specificity, not perfect sensitivity, etc