This has come up before, there are legitimate arguments for and against this but I’m included to side with the for (certainly after going through the process with my wife twice). LFTs are hard to read accurately, people are very bad at it. It’s something like 25% of the time people get it wrong. It is incredibly important that diagnostic tests are engineered to be as accurate as possible, removing human error is a legitimate engineering solution.

I suppose now we have all spent the last year regularly using LFTs maybe we are better at reading them? That would be an interesting study.

There is a startup here in the UK that’s doing LFTs read with a smartphone camera, they have a calibration graphic next to the result window ensuring a accurate reading. That solves the disposable electronic problem while using electronics for the reading. (Will come back and edit if I find them)

EDIT:

kalleboo found a citation for the ~25% false reading claim:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30231703

EDIT 2:

I think this is who I read about before doing the smartphone read LFTs:

https://www.sensynehealth.com/magnifeye