How Point of care testing has impacted healthcare?

Technology is making a major impact on the healthcare industry in today’s world. It has modernised the healthcare system, being valuable in finding a cure to various diseases as well as increasing life expectancy. Whether it’s medical equipment or advanced processes for gene therapy, tailored medicines or cancer detection, technology has played a vital role in saving the lives of millions.

Point of care is a set of technologies also known as near-patient testing used for improving the healthcare results. This allows the patients to receive the care when and where required. Examples of pointof care testingare blood glucose monitors, urine dipsticks, pregnancy tests, rapid strep tests, rapid HIV tests, haemoglobin level tests.

They provide accurate results within minutes to the physicians. The blood tests are performed with the use of portable blood analysers. Treatment decision can be made quickly after diagnosing a patient’s condition and monitoring the response. There are three types of laboratory sensitive test instruments-

• Single-use devices

The qualitative strips or cartridges are used such as dipsticks, complex strips and immunostrips. Complex strips contain many layers for each pad on the stick in which top layer is semi-permeable. This keeps the red blood cells away from the reaction sites.

• Single-use quantitative strip or cartridge

A charge-coupled device camera is used that provides a quantitative value. This includes cardiac markers, electrolytes, fertility tests, allergy tests, blood gases, etc.

• Multi-use cartridges

This is similar to a single-use device. Its capacity is different that analyses more than one sample. A single cartridge is used that contains an adequate amount of reagents and calibrators and analyses for some number of patients.

These technologies of point of care testing bring effectiveness and efficiency in the healthcare industry. The devices provide critical information to the doctors that help in treating the patients. With the use of this technology, diagnosis can be done at the hospital, home, ambulance or anywhere. Advantages of PoCT-

The procedure is fast as testing is done on bedside and results can be derived in a few steps.

• The need for processing, transporting the specimen to the lab and communicating the results is not required.
• The results are achieved quickly, so that appropriate treatments and interventions can be given.
• A small sample is required as compared to the amount needed for traditional lab testing.
• There are fewer chances of errors in testing. This includes inappropriate sampling errors, preparation or packaging error of samples, overwhelming testing protocols or steps and patient reports misidentification.
• The tests are performed individually that decreases post-analytical errors due to the incorrect transmission of results.

This technology and diagnostics are useful for diverse clinical settings such as homes, rural areas, ambulance and research centres.

Reduces the workload

The patient data is maintained in digital format that allows the quick access of information. Today, hospitals have shifted from paper to the digital world. This reduces the workload, saves a lot of time and chances of error is also less.

The healthcare industry is moving towards the technology of sensitive test due to the benefits being offered. The devices offer on-time patient care and faster analysis of data for appropriate treatment. These devices are personalised for every patient so that accurate results can be achieved with less margin of error.