What is the Point of Care Testing, and Why Should You Know About It?

Diagnosis is reached once samples are sent to labs to get their results; however, it is no surprise that this process is awfully long and can take quite some time. In the meantime, the patient’s health can deteriorate. That is why in 1972, certain testing kits were designed that could easily be used by people who did not need a lot of training to get results fast.

A point of care testing kit, short for a POCT kit, is one such way utilized to improve the quality of care. In this blog post, we will discuss what the point of care testing is and why it is used. Let’s read on.

Development of Point of Care Testing

The development of point of care testing started with the study of biosensors and pH monitoring under cardiopulmonary stress. This provided a ground for testing other biological parameters in order to reach a quick diagnosis and save time for the recovery of patients [2].

Over decades, notable achievements in critical care medicine, emergency response, and general practice have resulted from the implementation of point of care testing. Nowadays, the point of care testing may be done by a wide range of individuals, including laboratory specialists, emergency first responders, radiologists, physicians, nurses, physician assistants, and other healthcare professionals. They may also be done by yourself as “self-tests” or “home tests.”

Difference Between Point of Care and Laboratory Testing

Point of care testing has quite a few differences when compared to laboratory testing, listed as follows:

• Shorter Time to Obtain Results: POCT represents the test in a non-laboratory scenario. This helps save a lot of waiting time and offers ease of access to patients. With laboratory testing, samples go through various stages before producing any results. Therefore, POC testing saves a lot of time. 

• Bedside Testing: Elderly patients who are bedbound and travel easily can have themselves tested in the comfort of their homes. In contrast, laboratory testing requires them to wait quite a bit before their turn comes. 

• Less Accuracy: The downside to the point of care testing is that it is not as accurate as laboratory testing. All samples are stored at an optimal temperature, and levels of accuracy are higher than that of the ones tested through point-of-care testing machines/kits.

• Limited Parameters can be Tested: Laboratory testing comes with a wide range of tests that can be carried out, whereas the point of care testing is limited. That’s said, POC testing has fallen short of the specificity associated with laboratory testing, but this must be considered within the broader context of clinical operations.

Features and Advantages of POC Testing

POC testing has come with a lot of advantages, including kits that can be taken out of the lab. Moreover, machines of POC diagnostics help save the time for patients going to the laboratory when being sick. POC testing machines and diagnostics are designed in such a way that does not require any prior technical experience.

The machines that offer a point of care testing usually require samples that are easy to obtain, such as; saliva, one pinch of blood, or urine. Therefore the people using products helping with the point of care testing kits don’t need to rely on outside help [3]. 

Many items, such as molecular tests like coronavirus nucleic acid PCR, may be done on POC instruments. Some of the most important current practical application scenarios of POCT include clinical departments, outpatient, emergency, ICU, intensive care units, grass-roots hospitals, physical examination centers, health service centers, CDC, customs airport, community, etc.

Conclusion

Sansure is one company where trusted, high-quality point of care testing products can be bought. From the extraordinary results and sleek design, Sansure’s POCT products are not only for patients to test themselves at home (such as the self-test of coronavirus antigen), but also molecular POCT products are applied in non-laboratory scenes, such as iPonatic.

For more information, please visit Sansure at: https://www.sansureglobal.com/.

References:

1. Willmott C, Arrowsmith JE. Point of care testing. Core Top Cardiothorac Crit Care 2013:117–22. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139062381.018. 
2. Liu X, Zhu X, Kost GJ, Liu J, Huang J, Liu X. The Creation of Point-of-Careology. Point Care 2019;18:77–84. https://doi.org/10.1097/POC.0000000000000191. 
3. Vashist SK. Point-of-care diagnostics: Recent advances and trends. Biosensors 2017;7:10–3. https://doi.org/10.3390/bios7040062. 
4. St John A. The Evidence to Support Point-of-Care Testing. Clin Biochem Rev 2010;31:111–9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2924123/