A Stochastic Strategy for Optimizing the Cost of Systematic Screening of Some Diseases in a Situation of Insufficient Equipment

Abstract

In this work, we show that when there is insufficient equipment for detecting a disease whose prevalence is t% in a sub-population of size N, it is optimal to divide the N samples into n groups of size r each and then, the value allows systematic screening of all N individuals by performing less than N tests (In this expression, represents the floor function1 of x ∈ R). Based on this result and on certain functions of the R software, we subsequently propose a probabilistic strategy capable of optimizing the screening tests under certain conditions.