Schnelltest

Ein Schnelltest is a test that gives an answer on the spot. The sample stays in the room, the reading is taken within minutes, and nobody waits for a courier or a laboratory. It is the everyday German word for this, and most customers use it for anything that is not sent away. The technical term for the same idea is Point of Care Test, which is what the product packaging and the laboratory literature call it.

Three groups are worth telling apart:

1. The strip or cassette test produces a coloured line from a blood sample or a swab, and it is read by eye, which is how a pregnancy test works.
2. The small bench device takes the sample in a cartridge and shows a number on a screen, and devices of this kind exist for blood sugar, for HbA1c, for cholesterol and for inflammation markers.
3. The home test is bought by a person and performed on themselves, which raises a separate question covered under Selbsttest oder Labortest.

The limits follow from the design:

• A Schnelltest measures a small number of markers, usually one, and cannot be extended into a broad panel.
• Many strip tests answer yes or no instead of giving a value, which is enough for some questions but not for others.
• Where a device does give a number, that number comes from its own method, so two devices, or a device and a laboratory, do not necessarily produce values that are comparable over time.
• The reading also depends on the sample being taken and applied correctly, which is where most avoidable errors are found.

A Schnelltest is good at speed and at one clear question in a low threshold setting, whereas breadth and comparability are beyond it. A sample sent to an akkreditiertes Labor answers a wider question more slowly.

Before any test is offered over the counter the product has to carry the correct marking for its intended use, which is the subject of IVDR CE Kennzeichnung. The pharmacy hands over the result together with the accompanying information, and the interpretation belongs to a physician.