Lab-on-a-chip: a novel platform for disease diagnosis

Abstract

Medical research has placed a higher value over the last several decades on the detection and investigation of risk associated with disease and biomarkers, which has contributed to more timely and precise tools for diagnosis before the condition worsens. Therefore, a significant amount of time has been utilized in designing and creating detecting technology that will be utilized at the point-of-care to find particular biomarkers without wasting many samples such as microfluidic devices. This technology allows for efficient, rapid and high throughput sample analysis, while having multiplexing capability. Commercial lateral flow kits are one of the prominent examples of these microfluidic devices. This chapter discusses in depth the various aspects of microfluidic devices. The chapter covers various microfluidic devices such as paper and chip-based devices and use of these for the diagnostic platform development. This includes the development of electrochemical and optical sensors in a microfluidic setting. The chapter also discusses the future scope for microfluidic device development, especially in wearable fashion.