Evaluation of the BioFire FilmArray Respiratory Panel and the GenMark eSensor Respiratory Viral Panel on Lower Respiratory Tract Specimens

We evaluated the performance characteristics of the Film Array respiratory panel and the eSensor respiratory viral panel on clinical and spiked lower respiratory tract specimens (LRTS). The overall agreement between the two methods was 89.5% (51/57). The lower limit of detection of both assays for all targets in LRTS was comparable to that for nasopharyngeal swab specimens.