binGroup2: Statistical Tools for Infection Identification via Group Testing

Group testing is the process of testing items as an amalgamation, rather than separately, to determine the binary status for each item. Its use was especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic through testing specimens for SARS-CoV-2. The adoption of group testing for this and many other applications is because members of a negative testing group can be declared negative with potentially only one test. This subsequently leads to significant increases in laboratory testing capacity. Whenever a group testing algorithm is put into practice, it is critical for laboratories to understand the algorithm’s operating characteristics, such as the expected number of tests. Our paper presents the binGroup2 package that provides the statistical tools for this purpose. This R package is the first to address the identification aspect of group testing for a wide variety of algorithms. We illustrate its use through COVID-19 and chlamydia/gonorrhea applications of group testing.

Christopher R. Bilder (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) , Brianna D. Hitt (United States Air Force Academy) , Brad J. Biggerstaff (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) , Joshua M. Tebbs (University of South Carolina) , Christopher S. McMahan (Clemson University)
2024-04-11

0.1 Supplementary materials

Supplementary materials are available in addition to this article. It can be downloaded at RJ-2023-081.zip

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For attribution, please cite this work as

Bilder, et al., "binGroup2: Statistical Tools for Infection Identification via Group Testing", The R Journal, 2024

BibTeX citation

@article{RJ-2023-081,
  author = {Bilder, Christopher R. and Hitt, Brianna D. and Biggerstaff, Brad J. and Tebbs, Joshua M. and McMahan, Christopher S.},
  title = {binGroup2: Statistical Tools for Infection Identification via Group Testing},
  journal = {The R Journal},
  year = {2024},
  note = {https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2023-081},
  doi = {10.32614/RJ-2023-081},
  volume = {15},
  issue = {4},
  issn = {2073-4859},
  pages = {21-36}
}

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