Re:Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enou...
by nevinera on Friday June 25, 2021 @02:32PM
(#27634616)
That side-step was my actual assumption - I can't imagine that 1% of the _whole population_ currently has actionable cancer.
But yes, the higher you drive the prior, the less the false-positives cost. That's a fairly normal situation - it's why they have to evaluate the cost-value of further-investigation against so many different population groups to determine the actual optimal usage.
And yes, the question I was trying to prompt really is "what information would we need to have in order to know when this test is a net positive, from the patient's perspective" (and separately, "from the insurance company's perspective", since that's likely to have a very different answer).
But yes, the higher you drive the prior, the less the false-positives cost. That's a fairly normal situation - it's why they have to evaluate the cost-value of further-investigation against so many different population groups to determine the actual optimal usage.
And yes, the question I was trying to prompt really is "what information would we need to have in order to know when this test is a net positive, from the patient's perspective" (and separately, "from the insurance company's perspective", since that's likely to have a very different answer).