1. What is point of care testing?
Point of care testing, which stands for speed and ease of use, is a test that is done to address the most critical and important issues in clinical care. Doctors do not have time to consider the minutiae or endless possibilities. They only target the most central and urgent problems of the moment. People demand more from POCT equipment than just fast testing. They also require a POCT test that provides a clear enough clinical meaning. It is like a person who is about to die of thirst. The most important thing is to give him water to drink. Not whether his clothes look good or not.
The earliest POCT tests are blood glucose and blood gas analysis, and blood glucose is not just a simple diagnosis of diabetes. The three most important elements of a living body are air, water, and food. Most of the energy in food has to be supplied to the organs and tissues in the form of blood glucose. For patients who are in a coma, testing blood glucose is one of the most common ways to determine this. Not only should the result be quick, but it should be readily available.
2. Advantages and disadvantages of Diagnostic Tests In Lab
The benefits of the diagnostic tests in lab are many. For example, a professional environment, professional staff to operate, equipment with professional maintenance. These are all very important factors in guaranteeing accurate results. Centralized testing can reflect the advantages of scale. This can also reduce the cost of testing.
In the hospital's laboratory department, many experienced testers can provide very useful diagnostic information and ideas to the clinic. This can help the clinic solve diagnostic challenges.
But relying solely on a central laboratory has its share of problems. The first is time. Samples take time to get to the lab. Once a pile of samples arrives at the lab, it takes time to sort and register them one by one. It also takes time to queue up for testing. Sometimes there are not enough samples, and we have to wait for a batch to be saved before doing it. This takes even more time.
So even if it is advertised what machine speed, how many minutes to produce results. But for people waiting for the test report, this time will never be reached. For example, 2019-nCoV nucleic acid test, many manufacturers say that their experimental time or reaction time are already within two hours or less. But for the subject, half a day after sampling can get the report even if it is fast.
3. The advantages and disadvantages of POCT
The advantages of POCT equipment are small size, low environmental requirements, short response time, and low personnel requirements.
1) Small size and low environmental requirements. This means no need to build a dedicated laboratory environment. Most places can be used. And does not take up space and can be placed anywhere.
2) Low requirements for personnel. This means that at least medical personnel who have not received professional laboratory training can be used. Doing a little better even the general public can use.
3) short response time is not to mention. Common are a few minutes out of the results. The long time is only a few minutes. If the time is longer, there is no advantage compared to the laboratory.
The disadvantages of POCT are, of course, also very obvious. The most obvious is the high cost. Another problem is that the accuracy may be slightly worse. In order to be portable and easy to use, accuracy sometimes POCT equipment will be sacrificed some indicators. Another problem is that doing POCT is not as simple as making a large medical device smaller. This often requires new technical methods to achieve. That's why R&D is so difficult. Therefore there are not many POCT projects until now. And most of them came out a long time later than the technical methods used in the laboratory.
The relationship between POCT and the laboratory is like that between a private car and a train. A private car is always available, but it costs a lot. It is also not very convenient over long distances. Trains cost less and run farther. But it takes a lot of time to get to the train station.
POCT was first used only for the convenience of health care workers. And can save lives in an emergency. Due to the easy-to-use properties of POCT devices, there are also many items that have penetrated into people's daily use and thus for the general public.
The most successful example is the early pregnancy test paper. The next is the portable blood glucose meter, which meets the needs of diabetic patients for daily blood glucose monitoring. Of course, portable blood glucose meter is also a necessary tool in hospitals. The next is the self-test POCT device for some infectious diseases. For example, HIV screening test paper.
At this stage POCT medical equipment, more or to meet the needs of clinical departments. There are many reasons for this. For example, the equipment is still not small enough, there is still a threshold for use, the public's demand for daily testing is not much, etc..
However, in the future, there will be more and more POCT devices into the public home, POCT devices will become a daily use, like cell phones. This will help us to better monitor our health condition.
