The demand for point of care testing (POCT) is increasing across the globe because of the growing aging population, rising prevalence of chronic diseases, and lifestyle changes. POCT is the performance of a test nearby to the site of the patient care for providing immediate results outside the traditional laboratory environment. In addition to this, diagnostic companies, such as Alere, Abaxis, and Cepheid, have started recognizing the potential of quick molecular diagnostic testing, which why they have launched various point of care products that are based on microfluidic technology in the past few years. This, in turn, is expected to drive the requirement for microfluidic devices.
There are several applications of microfluidic devices, namely clinical & veterinary diagnostics, analytical devices, environmental & industrial, pharmaceutical & life science research, point of care diagnostics, drug delivery, and others. Out of these, the largest demand for microfluidic devices is predicted to be created for the pharmaceutical & life science research application in the near future. In pharmaceuticals microfluidic devices are utilized for sample preparation and separation, combinational synthesis, preclinical testing of drugs in living cells, and array formation. Microfluidic devices have several advantages, such as reduced reagent consumption, shortened reaction times, and enhanced data quality, which is why they are increasingly being utilized in pharmaceutical and life science applications.
The utilization of microfluidic technologies for the miniaturization of chip is also leading to the rising adoption of microfluidic devices. The process of integrating laboratory protocols into miniaturized devices, known as lab on chip, includes various steps such as pre-treatment, separation, mixing, reaction, and pre-concentration. This further help in reducing the cost and consumption of reagent, which is also helpful in several medical diagnosis with the help of blood drop. Apart from reducing the overall cost of screening the compounds for cell biology problems, the miniaturization technique also aids in decreasing the analysis time and carrying parallel assay in microfluidic devices.
