Point-of-care and research products

47%

Almost half of the world's population, 47%, had little or no access to basic diagnostics in 2015. The estimate comes from the Lancet Commission on diagnostics, 2021. ¹

12 trials

A 2022 Cochrane review pooled 12 randomized trials with 10,218 people with acute respiratory infections in primary care, in Europe, Russia and Asia. Guiding prescription with a point-of-care C-reactive protein test likely reduces antibiotic prescriptions, from 516 to 397 per 1,000 participants (moderate certainty), and likely does not change recovery. All trials were open-label. ²

Point-of-care testing is clinical laboratory testing done close to where the patient receives care. The range of these tests has grown rapidly over the past 10 to 15 years. ³

There are dozens of definitions of point-of-care testing, and none is accepted as universal. For the authors of a 2012 analysis, it is not the technology itself that defines such a test but its successful use at the point of care, by lay people or highly trained staff, in homes, communities, clinics, peripheral laboratories and hospitals. ⁴

Researchers proposed the REASSURED criteria to describe the ideal point-of-care test, mainly for settings with few resources. To earlier criteria such as sensitivity, specificity and ease of use, they added real-time connectivity, ease of specimen collection and environmental friendliness. ⁵

Point-of-care testing is effective only if action is taken on the result, and the service needs trained operators to keep its quality. A review of resource-limited settings warns that without appropriate quality assurance practices, these tests can undermine their very purpose of improving access to care. ^6,7