PooledTesting: A Shiny App for Pooled Testing

Pooled testing is the process of testing amalgamations of specimens in a “pool” (or “group”) rather than testing specimens separately. This process is used in a wide variety of applications and is an indispensable tool for laboratories when testing high volumes of clinical specimens for infectious diseases. Choosing pool sizes is an important decision that needs to be made prior to any implementation of pooled testing. The purpose of our app is to help laboratories make this decision. We provide tools to calculate the expected number of tests and to choose the “best” set of pool sizes, known as the optimal testing configuration. This Shiny application allows the user to choose either hierarchical or array testing algorithms for pooled testing. For more information on these algorithms. Operating characteristics such as the expected number of tests and accuracy measures are calculated and the optimal testing configuration can be found given the overall probability of disease, the sensitivity and specificity of the assay, and other specifications.