Home General Diagnostics Information Clinical Laboratory Diagnostics Current Point-of-Care Diagnostics Current Diagnostics Companies Future Point-of-Care Diagnostics References

Future Point-of-Care Diagnostics

Cancer applications

As with most diseases, the early diagnosis and treatment of cancer is crucial for patient survival and reduced patient morbidity from advanced stages. In order to detect the signs of cancer earlier on, we need to develop more sensitive cancer diagnosis methods to detect primary markers. This would allow us to treat the patient with less severe treatment options and tailor the therapies to the patients specific needs. Elisa and other diagnostics tests currently being used to detect disease state markers are simply not sensitive enough to detect protein markers in their early stage concentrations. As a result, most protein detection levels that are detectable already correspond to advanced stages of the disease. Smaller, faster, more sensitive, and cheaper devices are would be a welcome solution to replacing the less sensitive, time-consuming, and highly expensive laboratory-analyses methods. This would lead to new medical practices such as personal care, and providing important decision making results available at a patients bedside within a matter of minutes. Such a process would greatly improve the monitoring of cancer progress and patient therapy.

Although recent advances in molecular biology has led to amazing improvements in its understanding multiple biomarkers that could be potential signs for cancer diagnosis, this technology needs to be put into practice. Point-of-care medical diagnostics devices are the vehicle the medical industry needs to provide array based biosensors to detect multiple target proteins in a timely and sensitive manner. The sensitivity of the detection technology could be used to detect very slight variations from normal conditions such as DNA mutations in a variety of genes, protein expression, hematocrit and analyte levels and many other variables. By creating new and innovative biosensor strategies, we could perform cancer testing and other disease states more rapidly, inexpensively, and reliably in a decentralized setting. Only the future will determine whether POCT analysis, presently limited to vital parameters, will replace the central laboratory in whole or in part.

Future developments to help advance patient care

Advancing care to not only monitor a patients analytes, chemical balances, blood count, etc. but to also connect them directly with their primary care provider and emergency personnel if required, the patient can receive the necessary medical attention they need right away. Taking advantage of the wireless, computing, and monitoring technology we have available, we develop a fully integrated system to provide continuous personal care for those in need.

Source: http://depts.washington.edu/bioe/research/d2h2/d2h2.html

Home General Diagnostics Information Clinical Laboratory Diagnostics Current Point-of-Care Diagnostics Current Diagnostics Companies Future Point-of-Care Diagnostics References