Point of care testing (POCT) devices

Point of care testing (POCT) devices is diagnostic instruments that are used in the healthcare industry close to the patient. The major benefit of POCT devices is that they provide immediate diagnostic feedback in contrast to traditional remote laboratory tests that can take days for a result. POCT devices come in both handheld and benchtop types.

The handheld POCT devices are often based on immunosensors using most commonly electrochemical or optical transducers but also, piezoelectric and thermoelectric types exist. The optical immunosensors are very often based on multi-spectral absorbance or fluorescence spectroscopy but also Raman spectroscopy, reflectance measurements, as well as various phosphorescence and luminescence methods, can be applied.

The key benefits of using optical immunosensors are that they are fast and provides the desired immediate results. Also, for handheld units it is important that the optical transducers are ultra-compact, low weight, low cost and has a low power consumption. These features can be obtained with modern spectral sensors like the Ibsen PEBBLE spectrometers.

It is a trend among medical device companies to develop multi-purpose instruments capable of analyzing for multiple analytes. Since ultra-compact spectrometers detect a large spectrum – and not only a single wavelength – they are ideal as the optical transducer in multi-purpose instruments.

The most common type of bench-top POCT device is a blood gas analyzer. These units use multi-spectral absorbance to analyze the blood for things like hemoglobin derivatives, helectrolytes, urea, glucose, lactate, and bilirubin.

Ibsen Photonics is an OEM supplier of spectrometer modules for instrument integrators. Thus, we supply the specialized optomechanical hardware that makes up the multi-spectral sensor. We are ISO13485 certified to deliver components for medical devices and we ship thousands of spectrometers for healthcare applications every year.

If you are planning to build or upgrade an instrument for a POCT device based on an optical transducer you are very welcome to check out our standard spectrometers like the PEBBLE VIS and VIS-NIR. We do offer free loan units such that you can check out the performance before you buy. You can also contact us directly at sales@ibsen.com to discuss your project with one of our application experts.

You can learn more about how fluorescence, absorbance, and Raman spectroscopy work on our technology pages. There you can also find basic information about instrumentation.

On our resources pages, you will find guides and technical notes that will help you select the right spectrometer and detector as well as understand parameters like optical coupling into the spectrometer and the noise of the detector.