Rako Science guarantees to return urgent and standard test results within 6 hours and 24 hours respectively. Rako Science can do this because we invested in science, logistics, engineering, hardware and software assets to meet this standard.
To prove this capability to our customers we regularly publish our Total Turnaround Time and Laboratory Turnaround times here and here. Our latest data for this year is given below.
However, we want to provide even greater certainty to our customers by providing predictive results times at the point of collection. This is because “Uncertain waits are longer than known, finite waits”, one of the key principles in waiting psychology.
Waiting for your results can lead to disruption of your normal daily routine, and increased feelings of uncertainty and anxiety. We have been looking at ways to improve our waiting experience.
Using geographical and temporal data that we already seamlessly capture at the point of your test, we have been developing a new tool that can predict your test result waiting time with a very high degree of certainty (R2=99.8%). This means we can provide you with very specific wait times, to within minutes. You won’t need to change your travel or social plans for the afternoon, or evening.
This is made possible with the use of some advanced Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques. We take the raw data captured at the time of your test, perform a process called feature engineering to create meaningful information from this raw data, and then pass it through a Machine Learning model to produce a highly accurate prediction of your wait time.
This model has been training and learning on a years-worth of data collected by Rako Science. The plot below shows the predictive accuracy of our model, where “Labels” are the true Total Turnaround Time values observed, and “Predictions” are the predictions of the Total Turnaround Time made by the model. There are a total of 50 observations with an estimated average error of 15 minutes.
The predicted Total Turnaround time is highly accurate and has a statistical measure R2 of 99.8%. We will integrate this tool with the customer app. Then the customer will know the predicted test result wait time with certainty within 15 minutes.
No stress, short wait time, maximum certainty.
Rako Science test was designed to be scalable throughout the pandemic.
 | Andrew Lind is a Software Engineer and Data Scientist that works for Rako Science. He specialises in enterprise software development and cloud based infrastructure. |
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Rako Science is a pathology company offering saliva based rt-qPCR tests. Rako Science uses the University of Illinois covidSHIELD saliva test that was diagnostically validated and accredited by IANZ and contracted to IGENZ Ltd. Rako Science’s test is the first saliva test accredited in New Zealand and remains the only diagnostically validated test in New Zealand.