Point of Care Technology A Boon to Healthcare in Developing Countries
The extraordinary growth in global healthcare technology, paved a way of improving healthy living standards of people across the world. Particularly in India, the reach of healthcare technology to the common man is most essential to achieve the mission mentioned in the Vision 2035 document related to the health sector. A recent concept that can deliver cost-effective healthcare services outside the clinical environment is Point of Care Technology( PoCT). PoCT involves testing various medical health conditions of patients in a non-hospital or non-clinical environment. The concept of PoCT emerged a few decades ago alongside a lateral evolvement relating to growing technologies in material, electronics and computing. It was the influence of Lab on Chip( LoC) and Lateral flow strips( LFS) that enabled the emergence and steady growth of PoCT. PoCT supports the paradigm shift in healthcare industry emphasizing‘ Prevention is better than cure’ by early detection of diseases even in a non-clinical scenario.
During the emergence of medicine, there was the family-physician concept wherein health care was delivered at the patient’ s home through home visits. With the advent of latest medical discoveries and technologies, the scene of health care shifted to the hospitals with an emphasis on curative medicine. However, gradually the emphasis of care is shifting toward prevention and early detection of disease, coupled with management of multiple chronic conditions. Several critical instruments that incorporate multiple analytical functions into self-contained, portable devices have been developed utilising sensor and micro system and low-cost imaging technologies. The availability of such devices has enabled non-specialists to detect and diagnose disease. The support of the NIH to the development of these modern technologies has enabled point of care testing to provide instant results in non-laboratory settings and providing patient-centred approaches to health care delivery. Diagnosis and treatment of cancer, stroke, and cardiac patients has now taken centre-stage in the area of PoCT.
In the future, availability of miniaturised devices and wireless communication would bring about a radical change in the way patients are taken care of by doctors. Simultaneously it will modify and encourage the concept of self healthcare by the patients. The development of simple, effective and low-cost technologies in remote and rural groups would greatly help in providing instant, on-the-spot healthcare. The growth in software technology can go hand in hand with PoCT to improve connectivity between data base management services to produce intact records on patient data and demographics.
PoCT devices improve healthcare delivery in rural communities where resources are limited by:
• Improving the reach of healthcare by shifting its delivery to a local level
• Reducing overall cost of diagnosis and unnecessary travel to clinics
• Improving early detection by diagnosing the diseases before they become severe or serious
• Improving access to remote areas
PoCT offers the advantage of performing clinical tests using low-tech and high-tech methods and devices. These devices are typically portable, fast, and relatively inexpensive. Point of care testing has the immense advantage of providing efficient healthcare service through making available a rapid test result at a point close to the patient for immediate and direct action and improved outcome for patients. The critical aspect however is accuracy coupled with reliability of the test results. Hence PoCT cannot be considered as a complete replacement for
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