Cough into this: Brisbane firm finds a way for smartphone detection of Covid
The “brain scrape” ritual people endured when being tested for Covid-19 could be history for many after a clinical trial found a phone app developed by Brisbane tech company was more accurate in detecting the virus than rapid antigen tests.
Pfizer has made a $100m takeover offer for ResApp
ResApp said its smartphone application which uses machine learning to analyse coughing went through a pilot clinical trial of 741 patients, of which 446 had Covid. The detection was 92 per cent accurate for people who were Covid positive.
ResApp said the accuracy of the testing meant it could select different operating points to achieve higher sensitivity, high specificity or a balance of both.
The company said the high sensitivity it could use “exceeds the real world measured sensitivity of RATs”.
Chief executive Tony Keating said the company would now accelerate commercialisation by engaging regulators around the world.
He said the company had already been in talks with health and technology companies about how it could bring the app to market.
“These results also build our confidence in the development of patient management and monitoring tools for Covid-19 and expanding our research into long Covid,” he said.
ResApp said it would initially target use in settings where frequent Covid-19 testing was required, such as for employees in healthcare, students, the travel industry, sports teams, entertainment and aged care.
“In these settings, a high sensitivity test that only requires a smartphone would significantly reduce the number of RAT or PCR tests required, improving availability, reducing costs and reducing the environmental impact,” the company said.
Professor Catherine Bennet, who is the chair of epidemiology at Deakin University and a member of ResApp’s Covid scientific board, said the scale of the pandemic meant the world needed a more scalable diagnostic tool that could balance the over-reliance on RATs and PCR tests.
“By rapidly ruling out Covid-19, ResApp’s test would significantly reduce the number of RAT and PCR tests required while still maintaining the disease surveillance needed to manage the continued impact of Covid-19,” she said.
“The simplicity, ease of use and unlimited scalability of ResApp’s test will be welcomed by public health officials around the world.”
ResApp shares jumped more than 50 per cent when the market opened this morning.
