On Mar. 26, 2020, working in partnership with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts State Public Health Laboratory, and area hospitals, the CLIA-certified lab of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard announced that it had begun processing COVID-19 test samples from patients across New England. The lab returned its first batch of results back to physicians within 24 hours of receiving samples. As teams at the testing center apply additional automation, tests will take approximately 12 hours to complete from receipt.

By adapting an existing facility used to process clinical samples for genomic assays, Broad Institute has quickly scaled the testing center to create capacity to process approximately 2,000 COVID-19 tests per day. This is part of a larger effort, including through the Baker-Polito Administration’s COVID-19 Response Command Center, to create partnerships spanning government, academia, and the private sector to quickly grow the ability to test and support patients during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The Clinical Research Sequencing Platform, LLC (CRSP) is a subsidiary of the Broad Institute. CLIA-certified and CAP (College of American Pathologists) accredited, it can return data to physicians for use in diagnostics, patient care, and clinical trials. It is highly automated so that it can handle large numbers of samples. This lab is authorized to process samples collected in hospitals and other clinical settings and then deliver the results securely back to physicians. The lab has completed the FDA-developed validation protocol for the assay.