The FDA decision is just silly. But not much can be done now other than wait for the 1-on-1 and see what needs to be done further. In the meantime I'm hoping RAP pursues the FDA emergency pathway, as that is more lax (might even be able to do both paediatric and adult without having the adult US study), the only caveat is you're only allowed to market the device during the emergency but that's not a big deal IMO, as you can still apply through the regular pathways too.
But yeh I really hope RAP can get the app out there during this crisis. Since I can see it being used as a purpose built remote triage tool, to limit the amount of people going to the hospital to receive the COVID-19 test. They don't even need to be able to diagnose covid-19 to do this, as they can distinguish between upper and lower respiratory tract infections, as well as pneumonia. So using those factors they could determine whether someone is in the high risk category for having covid-19 or whether they're in the low risk group. For those in the low risk group it could just inform them they should stay in quarantine and keep monitoring symptoms to see how they progress and retest later. Something like this I don't think would even need to be sold directly to hospitals, rather try get government backing for it (and just go with a flat fee for infinite amount of uses).
Since we hear a lot at the moment about flattening the curve, which is information that's important for the public to understand what they can do themselves. But hospitals themselves are focusing on ways they can raise the bar (so a higher curve can still be supported without overburdening the system which is what results in the biggest amount of deaths), so a lot of focus is put towards expanding the number of beds, restructuring the hospital layout and maintaining a good spread of positive and negative pressure rooms to help isolate the infection, etc. But reducing the amount of people turning up unnecessarily to be tested would also assist in this.
Not sure if this is actually a viable approach, but it has been something I've been thinking about lately.
