One thing that's in the works is a combination test for Covid and the flu.
“ would be really useful for people at home or somewhere else, because the symptoms might be very similar and if you're in the winter, let's say next Christmas, and you're experiencing some form of cold symptoms. Being able to differentiate from flu from something else can be really helpful for knowing what you need to do, even talking to your doctor about what treatments you might be offered,” said Dr. Greg Martin at Emory University School of Medicine.
“Ultimately, we're beginning to see some treatments work better with some variants than others and so being able to differentiate the variant might become more and more important as time goes by, as variants begin to emerge,” Dr. Martin said. Other doctors say at-home testing is here to stay and not just for COVID-19.
Dr. Lam says diseases like cancer that require multiple types of tests to be diagnosed wouldn't work well for home tests.“Companion diagnostics are diagnostic tests that are coupled to a medication so whereas a patient could therefore determine you know, based on the test how well their drug is working or not working, and that could be something that they could work with their provider on,” said Dr. Lam.
During the pandemic, doctors have found that the fastest tests available are ones based on already existing technologies.