Point-of-care (POC) design that enable rapid, sensitive, and low-cost diagnostics of disease infection are urgently needed worldwide, challenging the emerging outbreaks of COVID-19 etc. The unique “sample-in-answer-out” manner requires integration of multi-steps inside the POC device, significantly impacting their diagnostic performance of rapidity, sensitivity, and specificity. This project will investigate the advanced scientific technologies across many disciplines of nanotechnology, electrochemical sensing and magnetophoresis, to advance and simplify POC design by improving the efficiency of “sample-in”, accelerating the POC sampling process, and enhancing the sensitivity of “answer-out”, in pursuit of comparable diagnostic performance of the current gold standard techniques, such as polymerase chain reaction and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Additionally, the POC design can be adapted for use in broad menu of disease diagnosis and meet the need for a diagnostic upscale.

2023

2027