The ResApp Health Ltd (ASX: RAP) share price is surging higher on Thursday.
In morning trade the digital health company's shares are up 5% to 6 cents.
Why is the ResApp share price surging higher?
Investors have been buying ResApp shares on Thursday after the release of a positive announcement relating to a COVID-19 detection smartphone app.
According to the release, the company will shortly commence a US-based clinical study to explore the relationship between coughing and SARS-CoV2 (COVID-19) infection.
ResApp has appointed Phosphorus, a leading US clinical-grade testing company, to provide at-home COVID-19 testing for the study.
What is the study?
The release explains that ResApp will conduct a pilot clinical study to secure data to train an algorithm to identify COVID-19 through cough sounds recorded on a smartphone.
Its results will be compared against the gold standard at-home saliva-based Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) pathology test.
The company notes that its regulatory approved cough-based machine-learning technology only requires a smartphone and is currently used to assist clinicians in the diagnosis of patients for a range of respiratory conditions. It is confident that the ability to identify COVID-19 will considerably strengthen its offering and applicability both within health systems and potentially broader settings where rapid, mass screening would be of considerable value.
Management commentary
ResApp's CEO and Managing Director, Dr Tony Keating, said: "While much progress has been made, the effects of COVID-19 are expected to continue well into the foreseeable future and we are confident that the development of this smartphone-based screening test will become an important and useful tool in many settings both within health systems and more broadly."
"Securing the agreement with Phosphorus to support the study is an important step in gathering the high-quality US data needed to develop robust and accurate algorithms, in particular when combined with our large existing dataset of patients with non-COVID-19 lower respiratory tract illnesses."
"Phosphorus has considerable experience in COVID-19 testing and its test will allow ResApp to obtain gold standard COVID-19 status from patients in the comfort of their own home. By recruiting in the at-home setting, we will have symptomatic and asymptomatic patients, an important factor in COVID-19 as it is both highly contagious and has considerably variability in its impact on patients," he concluded.
The company intends to update the market on patient recruitment and developments in the coming weeks.
