With an aging population, the cost of health care has increased substantially over the years. Today nearly 3 trillion dollars are spent in the United States each year, and it is imperative that we keep the climbing health care expense under control while raising the quality and efficiency of the health care. Point of care is a promising path to meet such goals because it promises timely, personal, and cost effective diagnosis and treatments with improved patient outcomes. However, most of today's point-of-care devices have traded quality and performance for cost and speed. As a result, the clinical utility of today's point-of-care devices has been seriously limited. In this presentation, we will discuss the challenges and potential solutions for new generation biomedical devices and systems for point-of-care applications. These devices will be built upon a lab-on-a-chip platform that integrates many technologies including microfluidics, photonics, nanotechnologies, and electronics. They will also leverage from the prevailing mobile devices for enhanced portability, connectivity, and usability. A few examples of such point-of-care devices for disease diagnosis and health monitoring will be discussed.
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