FT report16 Sep 2020 12:25
Please see extracts from the http://FT.com (See full link to access the report)
iAbra touted Heathrow as its ‘launch customer’ but doubts arise over the technology
None of the other employees has any expertise in viruses or microscopy, though one has a PhD in physics.
Before iAbra changes the world, it has to prove its product’s reliability, which has not yet received any external regulatory validation. Nor does there seem to have been any oversight of the underlying data for the company’s claims for the test’s accuracy.
One scientist said he was immediately concerned by the wording of the company’s release, which suggested that the virus is “another cell”, and therefore showed “either carelessness or frightening ignorance”
iAbra sent the FT a presentation with some information on the methodology used to check the accuracy of the tests, though several scientists said it did not contain enough information to explain how the company had reached its conclusions on the test’s specificity and sensitivity
Academics at the University of Bristol said they were not involved in any study that tested the sensitivity and specificity of the tests and complained about the wording of the release. Bristol university virologist David Matthews only provided samples of the Covid-19 virus to the company and was not in any way involved in its validation, he said.
But it is not entirely clear how the company calculated the test’s accuracy, and it seems that it may have misrepresented the involvement of virologists at the University of Bristol.
Jon Deeks, professor of biostatistics at Birmingham university, said, “we are in a pandemic, people are dying from the disease, and a company decides that it is reasonable to mislead us all to make their test look like the best thing available”, referring to the claims being made for the test’s accuracy.
https://www.ft.com/content/e7a279df-3239-4e00-be29-f38d98f4d730?sharetype=blocked
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