A revolutioNAry microfluidic stANd-AloNe plAtform ( genepoc ) for Nucleic-Acid-bAsed poiNt-of-cAre diAgNostics

As of today, there is no nucleic acid-based testing technology platform that has been a game changer for point-of-care (POC) diagnostics. GenePOC, a company stemming from research realized at Université Laval, is one of the front-runners in the race to provide healthcare with a molecular platform enabling this revolution and “A quicker way to diagnose patients.” Despite significant progress in hygiene, pharmacology, and vaccinology, infectious diseases remain global threats associated with approximately 25% of the annual worldwide death toll. In addition to the social and economic losses attributed to this high mortality rate, we cannot underestimate the direct and indirect suffering and costs of the hundreds of millions of infections that annually did not result in death. In contemporary medicine and for a number of reasons, the management of infectious diseases is still crippled by a lengthy diagnostic process that needlessly endangers the life of patients potentially subject to an infection. Since early 2000, the market penetration of molecular microbiology testing has not reached the expectations, and this is mainly due to financial, clinical, and acceptability stumbling blocks (1–5). To curb the morbidity and mortality rate of infectious diseases and especially considering the fact that we may be losing the fight against antibiotic-resistant and multiresistant pathogens (6, 7), it is time that the management of infections should be rightfully regarded as important as that of cardiac arrests or of trauma patients and that a “Change in culture without (microbial) culture” be operated for the benefit of patients (8). A major aspect that is regularly overlooked is the impact of the economic crisis that occurred in 2008–2009. Increasing and hard-to-control global health costs have accelerated a movement toward the centralization of laboratories; although the rationalization of resources is a logical solution, it significantly increased the time required to bring the clinical sample from the patient to the laboratory. Today, it is unlikely that a central laboratory could provide same-day results. Therefore, 24 h is becoming a standard delay that will significantly affect the diagnosis and management of infectious diseases. This delay is definitively inhibiting the positive impact of using molecular methods. For the diagnosis of critical infectious diseases such as respiratory tract infections or neonatal infections, or for the detection of microbes associated with hospital-acquired infections OVERVIEW