http://www.getthediagnosis.org/diagnosis/Breast_Cancer.htm
I just stumbled across this site, but you can browse by diagnosis for more numbers.
Sensitivity is what fraction of the affected people are actually found. Here: 90%, so 10% are missed.
Specificity is what fraction of the unaffected people are detected as such. Here: 95%, so 5% wrongly detected ("false positives").
In Europe, there are 60 cases of lung cancer per 100 000 people.
That makes 54 correctly detected per 100 000, missing 6 cases. That also means 5000 people incorrectly suspected of lung cancer (5% of 100 000).
Update: using the accuracy from the article itself, we would still get a total of 1000 of false negatives (affected but not detected) and false positives (unaffected but suspected). Incidence is still 60/100 000.
Either that or driving up healthcare costs significantly as those 5000 people are going to need an MRI or CAT scan or something else to rule out cancer.
To amplify your point,
99% sensitive from 100000 people with an incidence of 60 means 1 false negative, assuming you can't detect .4 of a person and floor to integer.
99% specific from the same pool means 999 false positives, same assumption.
You mentioned that re: 1000 total, but the kicker:
Total population, 59 true positives + 999 false positives.
So, if I test positive, absent any more knowledge that means it's a 59/(999 + 59) chance of being true, or around a 6% chance of being true.
Probably enough for followup testing, but an interesting demo of why the statistical accuracy is meaningless unless you also know the actual incidence. 99% becomes not many % right quick.
Some cancers like pancreatic are a death sentence because it's usually caught too late.
"Toshiba says its device tests for 13 cancer types with 99% accuracy from a single drop of blood"
"The test will be used to detect gastric, esophageal, lung, liver, biliary tract, pancreatic, bowel, ovarian, prostate, bladder and breast cancers as well as sarcoma and glioma."
The idea is that you have something cheap and easy up front before or in parallel to further downstream diagnostic procedures.
You'll still be able to identify a pool of people that as a group will develop this cancer at a rate 20x above the normal population. That still seems like a big deal, for instsance if I discovered I had a genetic factor that made me 20x more likely to get a particular cancer I think I would want to be tested for it out of precaution. This seems like the same thing.
(Now if the only further test you can do is itself super invasive or risky, that obviously has to be weighed into the decision too).
If all it takes is a drop of blood (as opposed to more invasive tests) to know with ~90% accuracy if I have cancer or not (and when the machine says I do, then do a more accurate follow up test) then it’s far more likely more people will get diagnosed sooner.
If ran twice we'd have: 49 correctly detected, missing 11 cases and 250 incorrectly suspected.
Ran thrice keeping the 2 most similar results we'd have: Most people correctly identified?
Say you run the test every day/week/month, can you look at the total results or do the failure cases for the tests themselves depend on the individual?
EDIT: nevermind, I got educated by _Microft.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-skeptical-look-at-screeni...
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/the_screening_test_t...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-case-against-early-...
95% specificity = 5% false positives. When the patient doesn't have the condition, it is correctly not detected 95/100 of the time.
I think they are creating microfluidic chips that analyze miRNAs. So, I imagine it's an orchestra of pumps, valves, etc pushing very very small amounts of liquid around and using an array of techniques to detect things, all dictated by microcontrollers. It's as interdisciplinary as you can get!
It should be noted that these papers are actually in great abundance, when I get happy is when a big company (e.g. Toshiba or Olympus) takes over because it means a return is to be made, i.e. they're going to pay for the patents and finally bring academic papers to fruition, and putting their weight behind it, probably make it work to solve problems like "cancer" (by detecting it super-early, making it easier to take out).
No meaningful papers published + huge claims +single drop of blood = TheranosII
[0] https://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1220546.html
The overview can be read in the following links: (all in japanese):
Toshiba announcement[1], National Cancer Center Japan[2][3], Nedo[4]
[1] https://www.toshiba.co.jp/rdc/detail/1911_06.htm
[2] https://www.ncc.go.jp/jp/information/pr_release/2014/0613/in...
[3] https://www.ncc.go.jp/jp/information/pr_release/2014/0613/pr...
[4] https://www.nedo.go.jp/news/press/AA5_100275.html
[5] https://www2.aeplan.co.jp/mbsj2019/
Also, here's the information regarding the project's funding and about the objective: https://research-er.jp/projects/view/920250 and https://www.nedo.go.jp/activities/ZZJP_100082.html
Is there anyone who work in the related area of research? Could you give us an overview of the actual progress of the technology today? What can the technology do today? And what is the limitations?
Otherwise, you are exposing people to side effects of radiation and chemotherapy without them needing it.
This is called overtreatment and sought to be avoided for a reason.
First, you need near perfect results on 1) false AND true positives and 2) false AND true negatives. Otherwise statistics will screw your results over hard. [1]
Second, the benefits need to outweigh the issues with invasive testing (taking your blood every day, 365 days, for XX years is bound to introduce some risk of infection etc...).
[1] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/breast-cancer/screening-tests-...
Theranos wanted to do any and all blood tests from a single drop of blood. Toshiba is limiting themselves to just a single kind of test, which I'm guessing the science agrees is possible with such a small blood sample.
The Toshiba machine doing one type of test from one drop of blood at a cost of ~$184 is well within the range of what should be possible in the real world.
Most cancers aren't throwing large amounts of detectable crap into your bloodstream. If they were, people would be doing routine cancer tests when you do things like cholesterol screening.
The fact that nobody can do this with vials makes me suspicious of being able to do this with drops.
In its favor is the fact that no Toshiba executive will be able to distract VCs and senior statesmen the way the top Theranos executive could.
Far fewer seem to be looking at miRNA, as Toshiba are here. I know of one other in Japan with a novel approach. If any Bioinformatics people would be interested email me and I’ll introduce them, they’re hiring.
