New Platform to Accelerate COVID-19 Tests into Real-World Use

Testing for coronavirus infection could become quicker, more convenient and more accurate, following the launch of a multi-centre national program of research in the UK that will evaluate how new diagnostic tests perform in hospitals, general practices and care homes.

The COVID-19 National DiagnOstic Research and Evaluation Platform (CONDOR) will create a single national route for evaluating new diagnostic tests in hospitals and in community healthcare settings. The research program will bringing together experts who are highly experienced in evaluating diagnostic tests and generating the robust evidence required for a test to be used in the NHS.

Jointly led by the University of Oxford (Oxford, UK) and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (Manchester, UK), the program will put the many tests developed by the life sciences industry to either detect current coronavirus infection or to find out if someone has previously been infected through their paces in hospital, general practice, and care home environments. The research will assess multiple diagnostic tests at once at sites across the UK and can be adapted to add in new tests as they become available.

“Right now, there’s a critical gap in how we road-test new diagnostics for COVID-19. By robustly evaluating these diagnostics in health and care settings, the CONDOR program will help the government and clinicians to understand the real-world accuracy of these tests in patients presenting with COVID-19 symptoms in the NHS,” said co-primary investigator Professor Gail Hayward, Associate Professor at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, and Deputy Director of the NIHR Community Healthcare MedTech and IVD Co-operative.

Related Links:
University of Oxford
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust