The GenePOC Platform, a Rational Solution for Extreme Point-of-Care Testing

Abstract

Extreme point-of-care (POC) testing for infections, as performed (endured) in low-resource settings, developing countries, tropical areas, or in conditions following emergency crises or natural disasters, must be undertaken under environmental, logistic, and societal conditions which impose a significant deal of stress on local human populations and healthcare providers. For disease diagnostics or management, simple and robust biomedical equipment and reagents are required and needed. This chapter aims to overview some of these stresses (requirements) and intends to describe some of the solutions already engineered at the heart of centripetal (centrifugal) microfluidic platforms such as that of GenePOC Inc. to enable rapid, robust, and reproducible nucleic acid-based diagnostics of infectious diseases, to better control the morbidity and mortality of infections and the expanding threat posed by antimicrobial resistance.

Keywords

• extreme point-of-care testing
• low-resource settings
• emergencies
• disasters
• infectious disease diagnostics
• centripetal (centrifugal) microfluidics
• polymerase chain reaction
• isothermal amplification
• GenePOC