Lean Principles to Improve Quality in High-Throughput COVID-19 Testing Using SwabSeq: A Barcoded Sequencing-Based Testing Platform

By Janae Jones, BS, MS,a Rosita Saul, BS,a Laila Sathe, BS, Joanna Xie, MD, Dawn Marquette, BS, MLS(ASCP)CM, Valerie A. Arboleda, MD, PhD | Laboratory Medicine

To describe and quantify the effect of quality control (QC) metrics to increase testing efficiency in a high-complexity, Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments–certified laboratory that uses amplicon-based, next generation sequencing for the clinical detection of SARS-CoV-2. To enable rapid scalability to several thousands of specimens per day without fully automated platforms, we developed internal QC methods to ensure high-accuracy testing.