New Delhi: Former Facebook Reality Labs Partnerships VP and a Google and Xiaomi veteran Hugo Barra is now the chief executive officer (CEO) of a medical startup called Detect. This announcement coincides with the sad surge in coronavirus cases in the US and according to Detect’s website, all its tests are sold out, the media has reported.
"Excited to finally share what I've been working on since leaving Facebook/Meta. I've joined forces with Jonathan Rothberg to build Detect as its CEO -- a consumer diagnostics company grounded in science, design and engineering," Barra recently wrote on his LinkedIn page.
Rothberg had called Barra and shared his idea for a PCR-quality rapid home test and that is when the former Facebook and Google veteran "jumped in". "Hugo, I need your help making millions of these", Barra added.
The consumer diagnostics company is among a handful of other groups making at-home molecular tests that look for the Coronavirus’s genetic material, like the PCR tests that are sent to labs for analysis, according to a report published in The Verge. They’re different from rapid at-home antigen tests, which look for proteins on the surface of the virus (and can be less accurate than molecular tests), the report added.
Giving details about the COVID-19 test that Detect has built, Barra wrote: "Our first product is the FDA-authorized Detect Covid-19 Test, a PCR-quality rapid at-home test that is at least 50x more sensitive than the leading antigen tests. It's available to US customers starting today on Detect.com for $49. Detect Verified is an add-on telehealth service that generates a CDC-compliant certified test result that can be used for travel, work, or school. It costs $20 per test and you get a certified PDF via email within minutes."
Some of Barra's previous stints were at Facebook Reality Labs, where he oversaw the development of Facebook Oculus VR headsets, Xiaomi, where he was the global VP and Google, where he was the VP of Android and product management.