✓ The push for patient centered care ( rise of personalized medicine ) ✓ Chronic laboratory staff shortages ✓ Rapidly increasing older population , leading to increased incidence of chronic diseases
✓ Rising incidence of lifestyle diseases ( e . g . cardiac , diabetes ) ✓ Increased demand for home-based POC usage ( facilitated by technological innovations )
✓ Increasing trend toward healthcare decentralization ( linked to rise of mobile technology )
✓ Long-term savings / cost benefit analyses ( preventive vs . curative medicine ) ✓ Rural locations with limited laboratory services ( linked to laboratory staff shortages ).
POC Testing : What , Where and Who ? In light of the many factors leading to the increased demand for POCT , manufacturing companies are pushing the envelope to make POCT devices faster , easier , and more reliable . The global POC diagnostics market is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate ( CAGR ) of 9.3 % from 2013 to 2018 , and to reach $ 27.5 billion by 2018 .
Hundreds of tests once considered too complex for POC are now routinely performed outside the laboratory . Sensor technologies enable the rapid analysis of blood samples for many critical care assays , including :
✓ Blood gases / electrolytes ✓ Cardiac markers ✓ Cholesterol / lipids ✓ Coagulation monitoring ( INR ; ACT , Heparin ; Hemostasis
Assessment )
✓ Drugs of abuse testing ( DAT ) ✓ Fecal occult blood ✓ Food pathogens ✓ Glucose monitoring ; Hemoglobin A1C ✓ Hematology ✓ Infectious diseases ( such as Influenza and Rapid Strep ) ✓ Pregnancy and fertility ✓ Tumor / cancer markers ✓ Urinalysis testing ✓ Other Chemistries ( Magnesium , Lactate , Micro-albumin ,
Creatinine )
✓ D-dimer for thromboembolism
Future : Tests Trending
✓ Microbiology ✓ Outbreaks / epidemics ✓ Methicillin resistant staph aureus ✓ Endocrine testing to guide surgical therapy ✓ Parathyroid hormone ✓ ACTH ✓ Gastrin ✓ Growth hormone ✓ Sepsis markers ✓ Stroke markers ✓ DNA testing
POCT is performed in many non-laboratory sites such as urgent care centers , outpatient clinics , physician office laboratories , retail clinics ( such as CVS and Walgreen Pharmacy Minute Clinics ), ERs , nursing homes , ambulatory coagulation clinics , the patient bedside , and in patient homes . Each of these environments has different testing needs , variability in staff available for testing , different data processing procedures , and different regulatory requirements .
Point of Care Testing may be performed by nurses , MAs , EMTs ,
“ Hundreds of tests once considered too complex for POC are now routinely performed outside the laboratory .”
“ POCT is taking a larger role as the healthcare systems continually shifts from curative to preventive medicine by focusing on early detection and management of chronic disease , along with a more patient-centered approach to health care .”
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