Diabetes Management in a Point of Care Setting

Why point of care testing? The objective of point-of-care testing (POCT) is the rapid provision of diagnostic information to enable clinical decisions to be made at the earliest opportunity during patient care and treatment. Such rapid provision of information facilitates optimistaion of the care process. The potential utility for any application of POCT can therefore be judged in terms of its contribution to decision making and to the process of care – the latter including access to care. However it is also important to be aware of the potential impact of the analytical performance of POCT measurement systems compared with laboratory analytical systems, as the majority of the core evidence on the utility of a test will have been established using laboratory based systems.