In urgent cases, these devices can call an ambulance.ĭevices that patients can wear are able to monitor, record, report, and administer drugs such as continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices and insulin pumps, which provide for better control over blood sugar levels, automatic administration of insulin, and even provide alerts if blood sugar is too low or too high. Healthcare employees including nurses, case workers, and physicians are able to view those results over a period of time as well as in real time to determine if changes in treatment plans are necessary or to evaluate the efficacy of a current plan. Patients and home healthcare staff are able to perform remote tests and automatically transmit those results back to the care facility. These devices range from home health monitoring of vital statistics, to periodic testing. Mobile testing and monitoring devices have emerged to provide advanced care, mobile monitoring, and self-administration of drugs to patients-providing them a better quality of life. The software embedded in these devices has also progressed to provide analysis-based results without the necessity of training the clinical staff on the details of the interpretive science. This provides a better quality assurance (QA) environment for data exchange and ensures that patient data is up-to-date and readily available to any healthcare provider treating that patient. The technology used to test at the point-of-care has advanced providing easy to use, handheld devices that are able to be integrated with other healthcare applications within a facility. It has also been shown that readmittance is significantly reduced by wearable monitoring and testing devices when patients are discharged with them. This also helps to reduce a patient’s length of stay in a healthcare facility, enabling the physician and other clinical staff to provide care to other patients while reducing the cost of healthcare for each patient. The speed in which a clinician receives an answer, provides a diagnosis, and executes a treatment plan is increased significantly with POCT. The health cost benefits of using POCT have been shown to be beneficial to the facilities that utilize it. Having faster access to test results when being presented with a patient for the first time-during a flare up of a known issue or when a new symptom appears in a patient currently under treatment-provides a physician with answers when they are with the patient, or going to be seeing a patient, in a matter of minutes. This has obvious benefits in almost any setting-from the emergency room to a patient receiving in-home care. Rapid test results can provide a physician-and other clinical personnel-with answers that can quickly help determine a course of action or treatment for a patient. The largest benefit of POCT is that it can be done rapidly and be performed by clinical personnel who are not trained in clinical laboratory sciences. It should also be noted that the tests performed at the point-of-care are typical clinical analysis tests such as: Fortunately, the facility and physician also focus on these areas for defining success. The objectives are focused on quality, accuracy, speed, cost, and outcome. The major objectives for healthcare apply to any experience a patient has with their healthcare-whether it is in a hospital, clinic, physician office, at home, or in a laboratory. It will focus more on the healthcare facility, physician and patient experience, and POCT outcomes. This article will not focus on that, or the regulatory perspective of the testing. The Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) in the United States has published standards to address some of the concerns with operational and technical issues that can occur with POCT. But how does software enable these testing capabilities, and are the results comparably applicable to the results in the lab? POCT testing Point-of-care testing (POCT) is used to refer to any patient testing that is done at, or near, the actual location of the patient.
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