NIH launches online calculator to help compute costs of COVID-19 testing strategies

Organizations gained an easy way to assess the costs of COVID-19 testing plans this week, in the form of a free, online calculator funded and launched by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Recognizing that the costs of creating an effective COVID-19 testing program can be overwhelming, the tool was launched to help schools and businesses find a testing strategy that would work best for their specific needs. It runs through different testing approaches, and actions like mask-wearing can curb the spread of the virus, offering clear guidance on risk-reducing behaviors.

“The NIH RADx initiative has enabled innovation and growth in the creation of new, rapid COVID-19 testing technologies,” Dr. Bruce Tromberg, director of NIBIB and lead for the NIH Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) Tech program, said. “Using this tool, school administrators and business owners can quickly evaluate the cost and performance of different tests to help find the best match for their unique organization.”

The developers of the calculator were researchers from Consortia for Improving Medicine with Innovation and Technology (CIMIT) at Massachusetts General Hospital and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They created the tool as part of RADx.

Users can enter details about their site and the measures in place there, and the calculator will produce customized scenarios for surveillance testing through modeling of four different COVID-19 testing methods. It then calculates the number of people to test daily and the estimated cost of each testing option, complete with tradeoffs for each test type’s speed and accuracy. Entries can be adjusted to demonstrate how simple adjustments can alter testing costs.

“A false dichotomy is often perpetuated that we must either stop COVID or reopen the economy,” said Dr. Anette Hosoi, associate dean of engineering at MIT and a co-developer of the tool. “But we know a lot now about how this disease spreads and the answer is not an either/or proposition. We know what kinds of measures are necessary to keep things running and mitigate the spread while operating — maybe not under normal conditions, but certainly under functional conditions.”