Blog post

The key to the growth and well-being of Indians and the economy is no doubt affordable and accessible healthcare. Especially in a country where a majority of the population resides in the rural areas, delivering quality healthcare whenever it is most needed can be quite challenging. This is why the relevance of point of care testing is much great here. Point of care testing (POCT) can be any medical procedure that can detect or monitor a disease at the time and place of patient care.

Point of care testing can be anything from say a HbA1c measurement at a doctor’s office, a home test for glucose or a rapid 20-minute test for HIV used in a public health center. The rapid tests are most often used in the labs of hospitals and public clinics but in smaller labs with shorter turn-around-times these may not be available or can be too costly. In a home setting, patients who can afford the devices may not feel empowered to use them.

The benefits of having access to point of care testing are numerous like more rapid decision making, reduce operating times, reduce high-dependency, postoperative care time, reduce emergency room time, reduce number of outpatient clinic visits, reduce number of hospital beds required, ensure optimal use of professional time. Though there have been significant improvements in health in India, there still is more to be accomplished for remote healthcare enhancement.

Point-of-care diagnostics becomes especially relevant when it comes to the screening of large numbers of people to prevent the onset of diseases like TB, cardiovascular disease or thyroid dysfunction or even with the growing prevalence of diabetes. Hospitals have increasingly begun to rely on the rapid results obtained with such testing methods to begin immediate treatment.

Especially as healthcare consumers today have come to appreciate convenience and speed, the changes happening is being centered more on the patient than providers. There can be a substantial reduction in healthcare expenditure if providing expensive care in hospitals is brought down and point of care treatment is administered in neighborhood clinics or community health centers. Robust government initiatives, the presence of favorable regulations, and the advent of next-generation point of care diagnostics technologies are some factors that can drive point of care testing in India.

With an effective business model that is designed in the real-world context and with appropriate pricing that can encourage participation from the rural and urban poor, the full benefits of point of care testing can be harnessed. The relationships among providers and that between patients and providers is also integral for successful point-of-care testing. To overcome the barriers to point-of-care testing programs, the Test developers, policy-makers, healthcare providers and funders need to use these insights effectively.

Widespread empiricism in clinical practice, lack of skilled practitioners to perform and interpret tests, insufficient treatment availability and post-counseling services at next-door diagnostic centers and the affordability of point of care testing happens to be some of the challenges to the successful implementation of the same.

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