TORONTO, Oct. 19, 2022 /CNW/ - Point-of-Care Testing (POCT) represents a dramatic advance in healthcare delivery. It allows for diagnostic tests to be performed by trained healthcare professionals closer to the patient, such as in outpatient settings, remote areas, pharmacies, or, as we have experienced with the pandemic, at the patient's home. This technology enables diagnostic testing without the reliance on core laboratory infrastructure. Coupled with appropriate quality assurance oversight by laboratory professionals, it can offer accurate and precise results for real time clinical decision making.1
As widely demonstrated during the pandemic, a greater use of POCT can provide meaningful benefits, such as in the following areas:
- Fast, efficient and sustainable care. POCT contributes to reduce demand on central laboratories, provides rapid and accurate results while offering potential cost savings for health care systems.1
- Better outcomes. Fast and efficient screening, diagnosis or monitoring for various diseases, leading to timely identification and management, to help drive positive clinical outcomes. 1,2
- Resource optimization. Canada's healthcare system is under immense stress. The use of POCT can help provide patient testing close to home in more decentralized healthcare settings. This has the potential of reducing visits within the more traditional healthcare environments, such as the Emergency Department.
The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates the core need for, and importance of, robust laboratory infrastructure, not only to protect the health of Canadians, but also to respond quickly to emerging challenges. A major narrative during the pandemic has been the limited access to modern, automated, and decentralized diagnostic tests across the country. Canada needs to continue to invest and build broad based testing infrastructure and capacity to safeguard the health of Canadians. POCT will be a foundational part of this modernization and is deserving of wide deployment.
"POCT can help to improve patient management; it provides enhanced opportunities to personal health rewards, and can augment patient care continuity with their caregivers," says Dr. Allison Venner, Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists (CSCC) President and CSCC POCT Special Interest Group member. "It also helps clinicians with faster turnaround times and is a critical component of improved overall healthcare system efficiency and efficacy."
LabCANDx is requesting that Canada invests $3.75 billion over a five-year period, to renew the Laboratory Medicine sector. Bolstering this area includes the recruitment, education, and training of Laboratory Medicine personnel, as well as upgrading laboratory infrastructure and technologies that have the potential to fundamentally shift the way healthcare is provided and accessed across the country.
Technologies such as Remote Diagnostics, Remote Monitoring, Point-of-Care Testing, Molecular and Genomic Testing, Companion Diagnostics, and Artificial Intelligence can help transform healthcare delivery. These technologies align with the "2022 Health Technology Trends to Watch" identified by the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH). Investments in these areas will help drive system efficiencies, while delivering better patient outcomes and helping to address the massive medical and surgical procedure backlog due to the pandemic.3
As stated by CADTH, Point-of-care testing refers to testing outside of a centralized laboratory and has a variety of potential applications for screening and diagnosis. Common tests already in use include those used for blood glucose monitoring, home pregnancy tests, and assays for detecting infectious diseases.4
The LabCANDx coalition is focused on working with health system leaders to ensure the right test, for the right patient, at the right time, with appropriate interpretation to inform clinical decisions for better patient outcomes and health care sustainability. One of the objectives of this initiative is to raise awareness of laboratory medicine.
The LabCANDx Coalition consists of more than 35 organizations representing public and private medical laboratories, pathologists, clinicians, technologists, in vitro diagnostics manufacturers, regional health authorities, healthcare associations and colleges, accreditation agencies, as well as patient advocacy groups that have come together to provide a common voice for Laboratory Medicine in Canada. LabCANDx is committed to promoting and advancing Laboratory Medicine's contribution to effective, appropriate patient-focused health care and to foster improved value-based health care outcomes.
___________________________________ |
1 Point-of-Care Testing: Summary of Evidence, January 2019 Update. Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH). |
2 Price CP. Point of care testing. BMJ. 2001;322(7297):1285–1288 doi:10.1136/bmj.322.7297.1285 |
3 https://www.cadth.ca/sites/default/files/hs-eh/ER0012%202022%20Health%20Technology%20Trends%20to%20Watch.pdf |
SOURCE LabCANDx
please contact LabCANDx by email at [email protected].
Share this article