HYDERABAD: Scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IITH) have developed COVIHOME, an artificial intelligence-powered Covid-19 test kit for self-testing at home.
The testing kit was developed by a research team led by Prof Shiv Govind Singh of the Department of Electrical Engineering, with students of IIT Hyderabad. The AI-powered kit is affordable and approved by ICMR. It can produce Covid test results within 30 minutes at home, for both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients.
The major benefit of the testing kit is that it does not require RT-PCR, an expert human resource, or a BSL 2 lab facility for the extraction of RNA, so it has potential for one to take the test at home without expert supervision.
The validation report confirmed the kit’s efficiency to be 94.2 per cent, its sensitivity to be 91.3 per cent and its specificity to be 98.2 per cent. Prof Shiv Govind Singh said, “A major objective was to break the transmission chain through affordable testing. We have filed a patent and are looking for industry partners for ToT (transfer of technology) for mass production.”