scholarly journals Hitting the diagnostic sweet spot: Point-of-care SARS-CoV-2 salivary antigen testing with an off-the-shelf glucometer

Author(s):  
Naveen K. Singh ◽  
Partha Ray ◽  
Aaron F. Carlin ◽  
Celestine Magallanes ◽  
Sydney C. Morgan ◽  
...  

AbstractSignificant barriers to the diagnosis of latent and acute SARS-CoV-2 infection continue to hamper population-based screening efforts required to contain the COVID-19 pandemic in the absence of effective antiviral therapeutics or vaccines. We report an aptamer-based SARS-CoV-2 salivary antigen assay employing only low-cost reagents ($3.20/test) and an off-the-shelf glucometer. The test was engineered around a glucometer as it is quantitative, easy to use, and the most prevalent piece of diagnostic equipment globally making the test highly scalable with an infrastructure that is already in place. Furthermore, many glucometers connect to smartphones providing an opportunity to integrate with contract tracing apps, medical providers, and electronic medical records. In clinical testing, the developed assay detected SARS-CoV-2 infection in patient saliva across a range of viral loads - as benchmarked by RT-qPCR - within one hour, with 100% sensitivity (positive percent agreement) and distinguished infected specimens from off-target antigens in uninfected controls with 100% specificity (negative percent agreement). We propose that this approach can provide an inexpensive, rapid, and accurate diagnostic for distributed screening of SARS-CoV-2 infection at scale.

Author(s):  
David Liebovitz

Electronic medical records provide potential benefits and also drawbacks. Potential benefits include increased patient safety and efficiency. Potential drawbacks include newly introduced errors and diminished workflow efficiency. In the patient safety context, medication errors account for significant patient harm. Electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) offers the promise of automated drug interaction and dosage verification. In addition, the process of enabling e-prescriptions also provides access to an often unrecognized benefit, that of viewing the dispensed medication history. This information is often critical to understanding patient symptoms. Obtaining significant value from electronic medical records requires use of standardized terminology for both targeted decision support and population-based management. Further, generating documentation for a billable encounter requires usage of proper codes. The emergence of International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 holds promise in facilitating identification of a more precise patient code while also presenting drawbacks given its complexity. This article will focus on elements of e-prescribing and use of structured chart content, including diagnosis codes as they relate to physician office practices.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Yue Lee ◽  
Christine Song ◽  
Peter Vadas ◽  
Matthew Morgan ◽  
Stephen Betschel

Abstract Rationale There exists a geographic barrier to access CIA care for patients who live in rural communities; telemedicine may bridge this gap in care. Herein we characterized the use of telemedicine in CIA at a population-based level and single centre. Methods Before the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine care was provided via the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN) in Ontario, Canada. Descriptive data were collected from the OTN administrative database and from electronic medical records at a single academic centre during 2014 to 2019. The potential distance travelled and time saved by telemedicine visits were calculated using postal codes. Results A total of 1298 telemedicine visits was conducted over OTN, with an average of 216 visits per year. Only 11% of the allergists/immunologists used telemedicine to provide care before the COVID-19 pandemic. In the single centre that provided the majority of the telemedicine care, 66% patients were female and the overall mean age was 46. The most common diagnosis was immunodeficiency (40%), followed by asthma (13%) and urticaria (11%). Most patients required at least one follow-up via telemedicine. The average potential two-way distance travelled per visit was 718 km and the average potential time travelled in total was 6.6 h. Conclusion Telemedicine was not widely used by allergists/immunologists in Ontario, Canada before the COVID-19 pandemic. It could offer a unique opportunity to connect patients who live in remote communities and allergists/immunologists who practice in urban centres in Canada. Independent of the current pandemic, our study further highlights the need for more physicians to adopt and continue telemedicine use as well as for healthcare agencies to support its use as a strategic priority once the pandemic is over.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Munish Sharma ◽  
Mahesh Krishnamurthy ◽  
Richard Snyder ◽  
James Mauro

The incorporation of a clinical pharmacist in daily rounding can help identify and correct errors related to anticoagulation dosing. Inappropriate anticoagulant dosing increases the risk of developing significant bleeding diathesis. Conversely, inappropriate dosing may also fail to produce a therapeutic response. We retrospectively reviewed electronic medical records of 41 patients to confirm and analyze the errors related to various anticoagulants. A clinical pharmacist in an integrated rounding between the period of February 2016 and April 2016 collected this data. We concluded that integrated rounding improves patient safety by recognizing anticoagulant dosage error used for the purpose of prophylaxis or treatment. It also allows us to make dose adjustments based on renal function of the patient. We think that it is prudent for physicians to pay particular attention to creatinine clearance when dosing anticoagulants in order to achieve the intended dosing effect and reduce the risk of adverse drug events.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lolwa Barakat ◽  
Amin Jayyousi ◽  
Abdulbari Bener ◽  
Bilal Zuby ◽  
Mahmoud Zirie

Objectives. To investigate the efficacy and the safety of the three most commonly prescribed statins (rosuvastatin, atorvastatin, and pravastatin) for managing dyslipidemia among diabetic patients in Qatar. Subjects and Methods. This retrospective observational population-based study included 350 consecutive diabetes patients who were diagnosed with dyslipidemia and prescribed any of the indicated statins between September 2005 and September 2009. Data was collected by review of the Pharmacy Database, the Electronic Medical Records Database (EMR viewer), and the Patient's Medical Records. Comparisons of lipid profile measurements at baseline and at first- and second-year intervals were taken. Results. Rosuvastatin (10 mg) was the most effective at reducing LDL-C (29.03%). Atorvastatin reduced LDL-C the most at a dose of 40 mg (22.8%), and pravastatin reduced LDL-C the most at a dose of 20 mg (20.3%). All three statins were safe in relation to muscular and hepatic functions. In relation to renal function, atorvastatin was the safest statin as it resulted in the least number of patients at the end of 2 years of treatment with the new onset of microalbuminuria (10.9%) followed by rosuvastatin (14.3%) and then pravastatin (26.6%). Conclusion. In the Qatari context, the most effective statin at reducing LDL-C was rosuvastatin 10 mg. Atorvastatin was the safest statin in relation to renal function. Future large-scale prospective studies are needed to confirm these results.


JAMIA Open ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 528-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albee Y Ling ◽  
Allison W Kurian ◽  
Jennifer L Caswell-Jin ◽  
George W Sledge ◽  
Nigam H Shah ◽  
...  

Abstract Objectives Most population-based cancer databases lack information on metastatic recurrence. Electronic medical records (EMR) and cancer registries contain complementary information on cancer diagnosis, treatment and outcome, yet are rarely used synergistically. To construct a cohort of metastatic breast cancer (MBC) patients, we applied natural language processing techniques within a semisupervised machine learning framework to linked EMR-California Cancer Registry (CCR) data. Materials and Methods We studied all female patients treated at Stanford Health Care with an incident breast cancer diagnosis from 2000 to 2014. Our database consisted of structured fields and unstructured free-text clinical notes from EMR, linked to CCR, a component of the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program (SEER). We identified de novo MBC patients from CCR and extracted information on distant recurrences from patient notes in EMR. Furthermore, we trained a regularized logistic regression model for recurrent MBC classification and evaluated its performance on a gold standard set of 146 patients. Results There were 11 459 breast cancer patients in total and the median follow-up time was 96.3 months. We identified 1886 MBC patients, 512 (27.1%) of whom were de novo MBC patients and 1374 (72.9%) were recurrent MBC patients. Our final MBC classifier achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.917, with sensitivity 0.861, specificity 0.878, and accuracy 0.870. Discussion and Conclusion To enable population-based research on MBC, we developed a framework for retrospective case detection combining EMR and CCR data. Our classifier achieved good AUC, sensitivity, and specificity without expert-labeled examples.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Basso ◽  
Ada Aita ◽  
Andrea Padoan ◽  
Chiara Cosma ◽  
Filippo Navaglia ◽  
...  

AbstractBackgroundSARS-CoV-2 quick testing and reporting are now considered relevant for the containment of new pandemic waves. Antigen testing in self-collected saliva might be useful. We compared the diagnostic performance of salivary and naso-pharyngeal swab (NPS) SARS-CoV-2 antigen detection by a rapid chemiluminescent assay (CLEIA) and two different point-of-care (POC) immunochromatographic assays, with that of molecular testing.Methods234 patients were prospectively enrolled. Paired self-collected saliva (Salivette) and NPS were obtained to perform rRT-PCR, chemiluminescent (Lumipulse G) and POC (NPS: Fujirebio and Abbott; saliva: Fujirebio) for SARS-CoV-2 antigen detection.ResultsThe overall agreement between NPS and saliva rRT-PCR was 78.7%, reaching 91.7% at the first week from symptoms onset. SARS-CoV-2 CLEIA antigen was highly accurate in distinguishing between positive and negative NPS (ROC-AUC=0.939, 95%CI:0.903-0.977), with 81.6% sensitivity and 93.8% specificity. This assay on saliva had an overall good accuracy (ROC-AUC=0.805, 95%CI:0.740-0.870), reaching the optimal value within 7 days from symptom onset (Sensitivity: 72%; Specificity: 97%). POC antigen in saliva had a very limited sensitivity (13%), performing better in NPS (Sensitivity: 48% and 66%; Specificity: 100% and 99% for Espline and Abbott respectively), depending on viral loads.ConclusionsSelf-collected saliva is a valid alternative to NPS for SARS-CoV-2 detection not only by molecular, but also by CLEIA antigen testing, for which the highest diagnostic accuracy was achieved in the first week from symptom onset. Saliva is not suitable for POC, although the accuracy of these tests appears satisfactory for NPS with high viral load.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. e1-e4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Martinez-Laguna ◽  
Alberto Soria-Castro ◽  
Cristina Carbonell-Abella ◽  
Pilar Orozco-López ◽  
Pilar Estrada-Laza ◽  
...  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document