![]() ![]() With so much of the global population lacking timely and reliable access to the right diagnostic tools, the digital solutions boom must be leveraged to bridge inequity in access to diagnostics and care. Basic diagnostic capacity is available in only 1% of primary care clinics in some low- and middle-income countries. Although COVID-19 has made “PCR test” a household name in much of the world, the reality is that diagnostic testing remains the biggest gap in the “care cascade”-the series of steps people go through to access health care. While perhaps eye-watering, the swab used for a polymerase chain reaction assay is part of a decades-long diagnostic revolution. Fortunately, we had the technology and expertise to meet that challenge.Raise your hand if you’ve experienced a far-reaching nasal swab at least once in the last 12 months. And we could bring back it on a dime if we needed increased capacity.”Īdds Turbett, “What COVID has shown us is that we must be nimble and flexible. “It was an incredible multidisciplinary effort to make this happen in real time. “The test gave Mass General a real lead in helping patients and in some circumstances, to enroll patients in clinical trials,” he says. Though this test has since been superseded by commercial tests that can crank out as many as 1,000 results daily, it acted as a crucial bridge, says Eric Rosenberg, MD, director of the Microbiology Lab. Thanks to work by the Mass General Center for Integrated Diagnostics, that number increased to 150 per day. With the help of technicians from research labs, we were able to move quickly.”Īt first, the test was labor intensive and only 20 to 30 could be performed per day. We needed people skilled in molecular diagnostics-which we have in our lab-but we couldn’t take them all away from the routine diagnostic work that was still happening. ![]() “This is where having strong collaboration between clinical scientists and basic scientists is really important. The task also required some creative staffing, says Sarah Turbett, MD, assistant director of the Microbiology Lab. ![]() “Anyone can cook a steak, and if it’s overdone, no problem, but not everyone can precisely prepare food for 1,000 guests and get it to the right table.” “It’s like comparing being a home cook to catering a White House state dinner,” says Jacob Lemieux, MD, PhD, research fellow. Moreover, the stakes were high, as conducting this work in a clinical laboratory is very different from a commercial laboratory. The work required not just a sheer number of hours, but also ingenuity, as the team replicated the CDC test as closely as possible while using different materials and instruments. A mere week later, the test was being used on hospital patients, and Mass General would become one of the first academic medical centers to gain approval for a laboratory-developed COVID test. ![]() There were no commercial tests yet, and laboratories were unable to get the materials to perform the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) test.Īs the need became an emergency, on March 6, a small group of Massachusetts General Hospital researchers began working round-the-clock to create a test. In early March, the need for COVID-19 testing was mounting quickly. From left, Melis Anahtar, MD, PhD, fellow Sarah Turbett, MD, assistant director of the lab Jacob Lemieux, MD, PhD, research fellow Bennett Shaw, clinical research assistant, and Damien Slater, PhD, manager of the neighboring Harris-LaRocque Lab in Infectious Diseases. Lab staff, seen here on March 7, before the hospital’s Universal Mask Policy took effect. Billing, Insurance & Financial Assistance. ![]()
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