3D printed porous media for use as point-of-care diagnostics (3D-POC)

Rapid diagnostic testing at the site of a patient, so-called point-of-care (POC) testing, is essential to provide healthcare when a fully equipped laboratory is not immediately accessible. Especially in developing countries, suitable POC diagnostics could yearly save millions of lives by early diagnosis of a small number of treatable conditions identified by the World Health Organization (WHO). The guidelines for viable developing world POC diagnostics defined by the WHO underscore the need for low-cost, disposabel assays that require minimal user-dependent steps and do not depend on external read-out equipment. The 3D-POC project approaches this challenge in an entirely novel way and proposes 3D printing to manufacture monolithic porous bodies with spatially well-defined internal surface chemistry. Through precise engineering of the capillary wetting behavior and surface chemistry of these objects, they will be able to function as self-contained WHO compliant diagnostic tools that incorporate sensitive amplification-based assays.