Smartphone-based point-of-care device

Point-of-care (POC) sensors offer a promising solution to today’s unnecessary and costly healthcare problems by bringing diagnostic tools closer to patients. The popularity of smartphones has led to the emergence of POC devices that leverage the capabilities of smartphones to create portable and affordable biosensors. Sought-after features of POC devices include ease of use, reliability, portability, and low cost. Smartphones have many of these features and appear suitable for integration into POC platforms due to their technological capabilities such as high-quality digital cameras, powerful processors, wireless connectivity, and touchscreen interfaces. Customized POC devices allow for easy monitoring of health status without the use of complex instrumentation. Recently, miniature sensors have been commonly utilized as POC devices due to their sensitive, rapid, and reliable biomolecule detection and wearable functionalities. Sensors are particularly suitable for POC testing because they can be miniaturized and produced at low cost. Recent advances in smartphone cameras and processors are being actively integrated into sensing applications, which could become important resources for healthcare diagnostics due to their widespread presence around the world. This chapter focuses on recent advances in smartphone-based POC devices.