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Biotech / Medical : ACMI - Accumed Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cisco who wrote (1295)	1/28/1998 7:51:00 PM
From: Sigmund	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1894

Yes that 25% is quite low. I did the math myself once and it didn't look too good. The way I understand it and I might be wrong, the lab has to pay to screen all of the slides. And of course the 15% is additional but I think that might not be anything new. There always was a quality control requirement. I think the 15% can be rescreened using AutoPap. But that is an important detail. I didn't see anything in the NeoPath press release that suggests that the 15% quality control sample can't be screened by AutoPap but when I think about it and read Dana's post it occurs to me that these slides have already been screened by AutoPap initially so how can it be used for quality control purposes unless it uses a second algorithm. If the 15% have to be reviewed manually that is a problem for NeoPath. It isn't I don't think new work since the 15% always had to be reviewed. But it eliminates the value of AutoPap as a secondary quality control device. They were lucky that they were not asked to have 15% of the 25% reviewed manually. This part about the 25% might have been confusing. I posted a while back that this is not automated testing. It is automated screening out of slides that do not need to be reviewed by a cytotech. In Japan I think they have approval for 40% screening maybe higher. Their strategy is to go back and request that they be allowed to up this percentage. For now, the way I calculate it and I certainly may be all wrong, this means that the rejected slides essentially have to bear the cost of 4 times the cost of each slide i.e. 100%/25%. Maybe NeoPath prices things differently than this and perhaps they should if they don't already. But in the meantime, the system is not tremendously cost effective. More important perhaps is the restriction placed on them. I don't know what it is but I can guess...that they have to label the 25% of the slides as not having been reviewed by a cytotech but rejected by the machine. Maybe the wording will not be as drastic as I have suggested. The impact? Labs may not wish to have this label on their results. It may be a competitive disadvantage initially. Eventually it will be routine but initially it may complicate the selling process for NeoPath. Of course this business about the label is a surmise on my part as the press release did not provide any details on this.