NEW YORK — CIC Health and Ariadne Labs said on Thursday that they have launched a program aimed at expanding and streamlining access to SARS-CoV-2 testing in the US.
The so-called Assurance Testing Alliance (ATA) will handle the logistics and operations required to connect labs with schools, elder care settings, employers, and other groups that require regular SARS-CoV-2 testing, CIC Health and Ariadne said.
Services offered by ATA include physician prescriptive authority and follow up for positive tests, logistics and customer service, government-required test result reporting, and billing. It will also offer a technology platform for organizations offering testing to their employees, as well as for clinical staff and individuals being tested.
CIC Health, a subsidiary of real estate services firm Cambridge Innovation Center, is acting as the central logistics and contracting entity of ATA. Ariadne, the health systems alliance between Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, will provide strategy and technical assistance to ATA.
Other ATA members include national clinical network PWNHealth, healthcare consulting firm Recon Strategy, and laboratory and testing software provider IxLayer.
CIC Health and Ariadne said that ATA has contracted with various labs already including the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Guardant Health, and University of Minnesota's Genomics Center.
"As a platform, the ATA is not limited by types of tests or suppliers, and we are in the process of adding several other labs and test manufacturers to make a significant impact on the total testing capacity nationwide," Recon Strategy Managing Partner and ATA Cofounder Nikhil Bhojwani said in a statement.
CIC Health and Ariadne said that the labs currently working with ATA could conduct an additional 2 million tests monthly with logistics support. Approximately 24 million SARS-CoV-2 tests are performed in the US each month, they added.