POINT OF CARE
The future of PoC diagnostics
Testing for infectious diseases in minutes, rather than days, is becoming a reality using new smartphone-based biosensor technology, according to DALE ATHEY.
Infectious diseases like flu afflict millions of people every year, bringing misery to sufferers with a hard hitting virus that can rapidly sweep through populations and, in some cases whole continents, in a matter of weeks. Identifying and treating these diseases also has considerable cost implications for those responsible for delivering health protection services, while placing a further strain on often already overburdened healthcare systems, delaying treatment and endangering human lives. Success in treating many infectious diseases lies in the speed of response; antiviral drugs are at their most effective within the first three days of the onset of symptoms, so the value to medical staff of having to hand easy-to-use, quick and reliable ways to test patients, whether they are in a local hospital or clinic, a doctor’s surgery or a remote village hundreds of miles from the nearest healthcare facility, cannot be overstated. As a result, there is a strong international trend to move the testing and monitoring of infectious
diseases outside of the confines of specialist hospitals by using point-of-care (PoC) diagnostics. For example, in the UK, previous
reports by the House of Lords and the Government response recommended increased testing in non-tertiary referral centres and GP surgeries as part of an approach aimed at earlier and better detection and diagnosis of some diseases to deliver improvements in patient outcomes. In some areas, such as HIV testing for example, there is already a strong international trend towards PoC testing and this approach is extending into other areas including the diagnosis of respiratory viruses. These factors have driven forward the
development of a new generation of highly advanced PoC testing and detection technologies using the advantages offered by new biosensor devices and smartphones and which have the potential to transform the way flu and other infectious diseases can be diagnosed.
Biosensor developments The most advanced PoC diagnostic approach combines specialist biosensor materials and advanced electronics in a small hand held device for the accurate detection of illnesses from patient supplied samples. Among these is a new mobile phone enabled biosensor from medical device and diagnostic specialist OJ-Bio, a joint venture between the Newcastle-based nano biotechnology company Orla Protein Technologies and the Japan Radio Company (JRC). In this collaboration, Orla provides the specialist biocapture materials that are combined with JRC’s advanced electronics capability to create a specialist biochip technology platform.
In this way, the innovative hand-held technology developed by OJ Bio combines new test assays carried on a multichannel biochip with a specialist reading device and supporting diagnostic software that can be carried on a mobile app, a PC or the device itself. This work has involved taking shear
horizontal Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) chips and coating them with new biocapture
APRIL 2015 THE CLINICAL SERVICES JOURNAL 53
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68