Capillary-Driven Flow Microfluidics Combined with Smartphone Detection: An Emerging Tool for Point-of-Care Diagnostics

Diagnostics

Sammer-ul Hassan¹  Xunli Zhang¹  Ahmed Donia²  Aamira Tariq²  Zobia Noreen²  Habib Bokhari²  SyedZ. J. Zaidi³ 

[1] Bioengineering Research Group, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK;Department of Biosciences, Comsats University Islamabad Campus, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan;Institute of Chemical Engineering and Technology, University of the Punjab, Lahore 54000, Pakistan;

关键词: microfluidics;    point-of-care diagnostics;    antimicrobial resistance;    lab-on-a-chip;    capillary-driven flow;    capillary action;   

DOI  :  10.3390/diagnostics10080509

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Point-of-care (POC) or near-patient testing allows clinicians to accurately achieve real-time diagnostic results performed at or near to the patient site. The outlook of POC devices is to provide quicker analyses that can lead to well-informed clinical decisions and hence improve the health of patients at the point-of-need. Microfluidics plays an important role in the development of POC devices. However, requirements of handling expertise, pumping systems and complex fluidic controls make the technology unaffordable to the current healthcare systems in the world. In recent years, capillary-driven flow microfluidics has emerged as an attractive microfluidic-based technology to overcome these limitations by offering robust, cost-effective and simple-to-operate devices. The internal wall of the microchannels can be pre-coated with reagents, and by merely dipping the device into the patient sample, the sample can be loaded into the microchannel driven by capillary forces and can be detected via handheld or smartphone-based detectors. The capabilities of capillary-driven flow devices have not been fully exploited in developing POC diagnostics, especially for antimicrobial resistance studies in clinical settings. The purpose of this review is to open up this field of microfluidics to the ever-expanding microfluidic-based scientific community.

【 授权许可】

Unknown