Small bench analyzers or fixed equipment can also be used when a handheld device is not available-the goal is to collect the specimen and obtain the results in a very short period of time at or near the location of the patient so that the treatment plan can be adjusted as necessary before the patient leaves. POCT is often accomplished through the use of transportable, portable, and handheld instruments (e.g., blood glucose meter, nerve conduction study device) and test kits (e.g., CRP, HBA1C, Homocystein, HIV salivary assay, etc.). These technologies enable different bioassays such as microbiological culture, PCR, ELISA to be used at the point of care. Lab-on-a-chip technologies are one of the main drivers of point-of-care testing, especially in the field of infectious disease diagnosis. POCT includes: blood glucose testing, blood gas and electrolytes analysis, rapid coagulation testing, rapid cardiac markers diagnostics, drugs of abuse screening, urine strips testing, pregnancy testing, fecal occult blood analysis, food pathogens screening, hemoglobin diagnostics, infectious disease testing (such as COVID-19 rapid tests), cholesterol screening and emerging technologies in micronutrient deficiency screening and diagnosis of acute febrile illness. This increases the likelihood that the patient, physician, and care team will receive the results quicker, which allows for better immediate clinical management decisions to be made. The driving notion behind POCT is to bring the test conveniently and immediately to the patient. A recent survey in five countries (Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK and the US) indicates that general practitioners / family doctors would like to use more POCTs. Thus, over decades, testing continues to move toward the point of care more than it formerly had been. Similarly, pulse oximetry can test arterial oxygen saturation in a quick, simple, noninvasive, affordable way today, but in earlier eras this required an intra-arterial needle puncture and a laboratory test and rapid diagnostic tests such as malaria antigen detection tests or COVID-19 rapid tests that rely on a state of the art in immunology that did not exist until recent decades. Today, portable ultrasonography is often viewed as a "simple" test, but there was nothing simple about it until the more complex technology was available. For example, various kinds of urine test strips have been available for decades, but portable ultrasonography did not reach the stage of being advanced, affordable, and widespread until the 2000s and 2010s. In many cases, the simplicity was not achievable until technology developed not only to make a test possible at all but then also to mask its complexity. Point-of-care tests are simple medical tests that can be performed at the bedside. HemoScreen CBC analyzer, an example of a portable point-of-care device
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