Smartphone‐based clinical diagnostics: towards democratization of evidence‐based health care

Abstract

Recent advancements in bioanalytical techniques have led to the development of novel and robust diagnostic approaches that hold promise for providing optimal patient treatment, guiding prevention programs and widening the scope of personalized medicine. However, these advanced diagnostic techniques are still complex, expensive and limited to centralized healthcare facilities or research laboratories. This significantly hinders the use of evidence-based diagnostics for resource-limited settings and the primary care, thus creating a gap between healthcare providers and patients, leaving these populations without access to precision and quality medicine. Smartphone-based imaging and sensing platforms are emerging as promising alternatives for bridging this gap and decentralizing diagnostic tests offering practical features such as portability, cost-effectiveness and connectivity. Moreover, towards simplifying and automating bioanalytical techniques, biosensors and lab-on-a-chip technologies have become essential to interface and integrate these assays, bringing together the high precision and sensitivity of diagnostic techniques with the connectivity and computational power of smartphones. Here, we provide an overview of the emerging field of clinical smartphone diagnostics and its contributing technologies, as well as their wide range of areas of application, which span from haematology to digital pathology and rapid infectious disease diagnostics.

Biosensors for Personal Mobile Health: A System Architecture Perspective

“…Previous reviews have examined the utility of smartphones for clinical diagnostics . Due to the abundance of diagnostic applications that rely on an optical readout, many of these reviews focus on the inbuilt complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) camera sensor.…”

“…Other reviews have covered biosensing modalities and applications in detail. [1,13,19,20,24,25,28,29]…”

“…[12] As such, smartphones could serve as attractive mobile health (mHealth) devices due to their form factor and inbuilt features and, due to their ubiquity, could help democratize healthcare and bridge the gap between patients and healthcare professionals. [13] The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) framework, also known as healthcare Internet of Things, constitutes a connected infrastructure of medical devices that can collect, analyze, and transfer data using networking technologies. [14] Smartphonebased diagnostic and mHealth systems, by virtue of their inbuilt sensors and connectivity features, are an integral part of this developing IoMT framework.…”

“…[19] Previous reviews have examined the utility of smartphones for clinical diagnostics. [1,13,20,21] Due to the abundance of diagnostic applications that rely on an optical readout, many of these reviews focus on the inbuilt complementary metaloxide-semiconductor (CMOS) camera sensor. The smartphone has also been used to develop low-cost, portable microscopes capable of achieving up to 800X magnification.…”

Smartphone‐based clinical diagnostics and atrial fibrillation: the need to avoid being out of sight

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We immediately read with great attention and interest the significant and insightful review by Hern andez-Neuta et al entitled 'Smartphonebased clinical diagnostics: towards democratization of evidence-based health care.' [1], recently published in the Journal of Internal Medicine -2019; 285: 19-39and providing an overview of the emerging field of clinical smartphone diagnostics and its contributing technologies, as well as their wide range of areas of application, which span from haematology to digital pathology and rapid infectious disease diagnostics. In conclusion, the authors state that smartphone-based diagnostics is a powerful approach that could strongly influence how medicine is currently being practised, probably and hopefully in a similar manner as how smartphones revolutionized communications.

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