Leveraging network structure to improve pooled testing efficiency.

ABSTRACT: Screening is a powerful tool for infection control, allowing for infectious individuals, whether they be symptomatic or asymptomatic, to be identified and isolated. The resource burden of regular and comprehensive screening can often be prohibitive, however. One such measure to address this is pooled testing, whereby groups of individuals are each given a composite test; should a group receive a positive diagnostic test result, those comprising the group are then tested individually. Infectious disease is spread through a transmission network, and this paper shows how assigning individuals to pools based on this underlying network can improve the efficiency of the pooled testing strategy, thereby reducing the resource burden. We designed a simulated annealing algorithm to improve the poole

SUBMITTER: Sewell DK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9826453 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature