Advances in Smartphone-Based Point-of-Care Diagnostics

Point-of-care (POC) diagnostics is playing an increasingly important role in public health, environmental monitoring, and food safety analysis. Smartphones, alone or in conjunction with add-on devices, have shown great capability of data collection, analysis, display, and transmission, making them popular in POC diagnostics. In this article, the state-of-the-art advances in smartphone-based POC diagnostic technologies and their applications in the past few years are outlined, ranging from
in vivo
tests that use smartphone's built-in/external sensors to detect biological signals to
in vitro
tests that involves complicated biochemical reactions. Novel techniques are illustrated by a number of attractive examples, followed by a brief discussion of the smartphone's role in telemedicine. The challenges and perspectives of smartphone-based POC diagnostics are also provided.