Pool testing that cut school COVID testing costs by 30%

The challenge

What we did

Results

• 30%

  proven reduction in testing cost
• 1st

  of its kind pool-testing technique for schools

The context

This project brought together Thermo Fisher Scientific, a global supplier of analytical instruments and life-science solutions, and Oncologica, a Cambridge precision-oncology lab that also ran COVID-19 testing and viral sequencing during the pandemic. Dbrothers built the platform that connected them.

Schools had to identify infected people fast to stop the virus spreading, but testing each swab individually ate up time that was scarce. Frequent testing was also expensive. Schools and labs needed a way to speed up identification while easing the time and cost of analysis.

What we built

The answer was a group-testing platform tailored to schools, built around a pool-testing technique that balances cost against safety.

• Pool testing that lets a lab screen many samples together and only break down the pools that flag positive.
• Real-time data transmission with client-side encryption for confidentiality.
• A dashboard with extensive filtering, testing charts, and class-specific results.
• Risk assessment across different areas of a school, so hotspots are visible.

How it works in production

Samples are grouped and tested as pools, and results flow to the dashboard the moment they're ready. A school monitors its testing comprehensively and reads risk by area and by class, while the lab keeps precise control over the process and runs it far more cost-efficiently than testing every swab on its own.

The outcome

The pool-testing technique was the first of its kind for schools and cut testing cost by a proven 30%, with client-side encryption protecting the data. Test statuses transmit instantly and clear dashboards make reporting easy, so schools and labs could communicate quickly and keep education running more safely.