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Review
. 2016 May 24;7(6):94.
doi: 10.3390/mi7060094.

The GenePOC Platform, a Rational Solution for Extreme Point-of-Care Testing

Affiliations
Review

The GenePOC Platform, a Rational Solution for Extreme Point-of-Care Testing

Luc Bissonnette et al. Micromachines (Basel). .

Abstract

Extreme point-of-care (POC) testing for infections, as performed (endured) in low-resource settings, developing countries, tropical areas, or in conditions following emergency crises or natural disasters, must be undertaken under environmental, logistic, and societal conditions which impose a significant deal of stress on local human populations and healthcare providers. For disease diagnostics or management, simple and robust biomedical equipment and reagents are required and needed. This chapter aims to overview some of these stresses (requirements) and intends to describe some of the solutions already engineered at the heart of centripetal (centrifugal) microfluidic platforms such as that of GenePOC Inc. to enable rapid, robust, and reproducible nucleic acid-based diagnostics of infectious diseases, to better control the morbidity and mortality of infections and the expanding threat posed by antimicrobial resistance.

Keywords: GenePOC; centripetal (centrifugal) microfluidics; disasters; emergencies; extreme point-of-care testing; infectious disease diagnostics; isothermal amplification; low-resource settings; polymerase chain reaction.

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Conflict of interest statement

Luc Bissonnette declares having no conflict of interest, while Michel G. Bergeron is the founder of GenePOC Inc. of Québec City, QC, Canada.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic description of the GenePOC disposable, a MCD integrating the essential functions and components for performing nucleic acid-based diagnostics at POC. Copyright © GenePOC Inc. 2016 All rights reserved.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The workflow of the GenePOC platform. Source: GenePOC Inc.

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