Virological Point-Of-Care Testing for the Developing World

ABSTRACT: 

The goal of point-of-care testing is to provide fast, convenient, and easy-to-use diagnostic assays that shorten the turnaround time of intervention. Several diagnostic tests have already migrated from the centralized laboratory to patients’ bedside, physician offices and domestic environments in more developed countries. However, the situation is dramatically different in countries of the developing world where lack of facilities and resources still results in diagnosis to be inferred mostly from the symptoms only. Reliable and rapid diagnosis is urgently needed particularly in case of viral diseases with the concrete risk of outbreaks going undetected in the early stages. In this article we will advocate the necessity to implement robust point-of-care testing for viral diseases to overcome the diagnostic gap of less developed countries.

KEYWORDS:

• developing countries
• lab-on-chip
• LOC
• POC
• POCT
• point-of-care
• viral diagnosis

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank G Corazza for reading the manuscript.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

M Baba was funded by an ICGEB short-term fellowship programme grant (F/NIG08-5) and a Volkswagen Stiftung 'Knowledge for tomorrow: Cooperative Research in Sub-Saharan Africa' travel grant (24112008). Virological testing at UMTH has been implemented thanks to collaboration with ICGEB, the Bernhard-Nocht-Institute for Tropical Medicine (S Günther) and the 'Burlo Garofolo' Hospital in Trieste, Italy (P D'Agaro). N Vidergar is financially supported by OREL.doo. A Marcello is a consultant of OREL.doo for the development of OLED-based devices. His work on LOC/POCT has been funded by: the National R&D project ‘DIA OLED’ financed by Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia of Italy (art. 12, DM 593/2000), in collaboration with Plast-Optica Spa, Eurotech Spa, Euroclone Spa, Alphagenics Srl and University of Trieste; the International R&D Project ‘OLED CHIP’ financed by FP7 ERA NET in collaboration with OREL.doo (Slovenija), Cosylab (Slovenija), Laplace-CNRS (France), LED Engineering (France); the POR-FESR Project ‘FLAVIPOC’ financed by Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia of Italy in collaboration with Euroclone Spa, University of Trieste, Hospital Burlo Garofolo and Cluster of Biomedicine. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

M Baba was funded by an ICGEB short-term fellowship programme grant (F/NIG08-5) and a Volkswagen Stiftung 'Knowledge for tomorrow: Cooperative Research in Sub-Saharan Africa' travel grant (24112008). Virological testing at UMTH has been implemented thanks to collaboration with ICGEB, the Bernhard-Nocht-Institute for Tropical Medicine (S Günther) and the 'Burlo Garofolo' Hospital in Trieste, Italy (P D'Agaro). N Vidergar is financially supported by OREL.doo. A Marcello is a consultant of OREL.doo for the development of OLED-based devices. His work on LOC/POCT has been funded by: the National R&D project ‘DIA OLED’ financed by Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia of Italy (art. 12, DM 593/2000), in collaboration with Plast-Optica Spa, Eurotech Spa, Euroclone Spa, Alphagenics Srl and University of Trieste; the International R&D Project ‘OLED CHIP’ financed by FP7 ERA NET in collaboration with OREL.doo (Slovenija), Cosylab (Slovenija), Laplace-CNRS (France), LED Engineering (France); the POR-FESR Project ‘FLAVIPOC’ financed by Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia of Italy in collaboration with Euroclone Spa, University of Trieste, Hospital Burlo Garofolo and Cluster of Biomedicine. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.