Fig. 3: Performance of an automated ferrobotic SARS-CoV-2 RT-LAMP workflow for individual clinical sample testing.

a, The microfluidic chip for individual sample testing (scale bar, 5 mm). b, The timeline of the streamlined on-chip operations for automated individual testing, which includes active ferrobotic sample processing operations over a time window of 1.75 min. Heat lysis and the RT-LAMP reaction were performed at 95 °C and 65 °C, respectively. c, Sequential optical images of the active ferrobotic sample processing operations (performed automatically). d, Comparison of the ferrobotic SARS-CoV-2 RT-LAMP assay readouts with the corresponding RT–PCR results (Ct values) for a collection of 100 clinical samples. Each datapoint represents one sample. The inset compares ferrobotically produced versus manually performed RT-LAMP assay results, illustrating that the corresponding sample test results are in complete agreement (whisker limits show extremums, box limits show quartiles and the horizontal line is the median, for the same collection of n = 100 samples). e, Corresponding receiver operating characteristic curve of the analysed samples. The sensitivity and specificity are based on the set cut-off value of 710 a.u. (also serving as the on-chip detection threshold). FN, false negative; FP, false positive; TN, true negative; TP, true positive.