Microfluidic Point-of-Care Devices: New Trends and Future Prospects for eHealth Diagnostics

Abstract

Point-of-care (PoC) diagnostics is promising for early detection of a number of diseases, including cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases, in addition to serving for monitoring health conditions. To be efficient and cost-effective, portable PoC devices are made with microfluidic technologies, with which laboratory analysis can be made with small-volume samples. Recent years have witnessed considerable progress in this area with “epidermal electronics”, including miniaturized wearable diagnosis devices. These wearable devices allow for continuous real-time transmission of biological data to the Internet for further processing and transformation into clinical knowledge. Other approaches include bluetooth and WiFi technology for data transmission from portable (non-wearable) diagnosis devices to cellphones or computers, and then to the Internet for communication with centralized healthcare structures. There are, however, considerable challenges to be faced before PoC devices become routine in the clinical practice. For instance, the implementation of this technology requires integration of detection components with other fluid regulatory elements at the microscale, where fluid-flow properties become increasingly controlled by viscous forces rather than inertial forces. Another challenge is to develop new materials for environmentally friendly, cheap, and portable microfluidic devices. In this review paper, we first revisit the progress made in the last few years and discuss trends and strategies for the fabrication of microfluidic devices. Then, we discuss the challenges in lab-on-a-chip biosensing devices, including colorimetric sensors coupled to smartphones, plasmonic sensors, and electronic tongues. The latter ones use statistical and big data analysis for proper classification. The increasing use of big data and artificial intelligence methods is then commented upon in the context of wearable and handled biosensing platforms for the Internet of things and futuristic healthcare systems.

Evolution of Biochip Technology: A Review from Lab-on-a-Chip to Organ-on-a-Chip

“…Various exciting directions are expected for the future of LOC highly integrated devices for diagnostic and therapeutic are some of the interesting applications of LOC devices. For instance, rapid detection of viral infections [152,153] and early detection of cancer biomarkers [154,155] directly from body fluids are some of the highly attractive subjects in this area.…”

Point-of-care diagnostics for infectious diseases: From methods to devices

“…The fast development of mobile networks, internet of things (IoT), machine learning and AI has facilitated the development of POC devices towards remote assay operation and interpretation, more user-friendly and convenient operation, fully automated and intelligent detection, and high-efficient result readout, enabling personalized diagnosis and therapy in a fast, low cost and high-efficient way [509] , [510] , [511] , [512] , [513] , [514] . By using IoT, POC devices would be able to communicate with centralized location remotely, provide important information to the operators, and speed up the data transmission for big data analysis, which can contribute greatly to the prevention and control of pandemic such as COVID-19 [515] , [516] .…”

Internet of medical things (IoMT)-integrated biosensors for point-of-care testing of infectious diseases

“…The demand of POC devices for self-diagnostics is likely to increase among patients. Several industries or research organizations are working on development of off-the-shelf or customized POC devices, e.g., ChipShop Dolomite, Abbott Laboratories, Cellix Ltd., Bio-Rad Laboratories, Agilent Technologies, and many more ( Mejía-Salazar et al, 2020 ). Race towards technological advances in POC devices provide beneficial insight into opportunities, trends, and challenges.…”