The future of point-of-care testing in the healthcare landscape

Tony Cambridge, Managing Director of Thornhill Healthcare Events and Consultancy and Lead Biomedical Scientist at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, England.
People living with long-term health conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease, require regular monitoring and medical support to manage their symptoms and maintain their quality of life, but challenges such as illness or remote location often limit access to in-person care. In this blog, Tony Cambridge, Managing Director of Thornhill Healthcare Events and Consultancy and Lead Biomedical Scientist at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, England, discusses how the ongoing shift towards point-of-care testing with innovative user-friendly devices supports decentralised disease monitoring and personalised care.
The future of point-of-care testing in the healthcare landscape
Those living with certain long-term health conditions often need regular, ongoing medical support to ensure they are managing their symptoms and maintaining the best possible quality of life. Frequent and reliable monitoring is key to this, as it enables healthcare providers and patients to decide on the best course of action as soon as possible. However, many people may be unable to visit clinics or hospitals in person due to their particular illness or remote location. This makes it difficult for them to receive the diagnostic and monitoring services they need to prevent their condition from worsening, which can result in avoidable hospital stays and a need for more extensive treatments. It can also be inconvenient and time consuming for those with chronic digestive diseases to visit healthcare facilities for gastrointestinal diagnostics on a regular basis, even when distance is not an issue, impacting on productivity, quality of life and general well-being in the long term.
Point-of-care (POC) testing is a powerful tool that is revolutionising access to diagnostics and disease management by decentralising healthcare, empowering individuals to take control of their own condition. POC testing allows diagnostic assays to be performed at or near the site of patient care, and patients can even conduct some diagnostic tests themselves in the comfort and privacy of their homes without medical supervision. At-home testing can also contribute to therapeutic drug monitoring, providing insights into how well a treatment is working over time and informing NHS practitioners of proactive interventions. By offering results in real time, POC testing allows healthcare providers to make timely, confident clinical decisions, which are crucial for effective patient management1 and reduce the need for inconvenient repeated clinical visits. This enhanced responsiveness also helps to prevent health conditions from worsening to the point that a patient requires hospital admission and extra treatments, ultimately contributing to improved outcomes.2,3 Finally, POC testing potentially alleviates the testing burden on central laboratories to reduce the overall cost of diagnostics, hospital visits and admissions and additional complex treatments on healthcare systems.1,4
Growing support for novel self-testing pathways
The potential of POC testing has long been recognised by the NHS, which has formulated several long-term plans to overhaul the healthcare system and support individuals to take more control over their treatment.4,5 These plans include transitioning to ‘out-of-hospital’ care pathways by integrating POC and self-testing into routine practice where possible.4,6 This approach aims to provide rapid diagnostic services closer to patients, reducing the need for hospital visits and improving access to healthcare services.1
Recent studies have even highlighted that 61 per cent of patients believe that expanding opportunities to test at home could help speed up diagnosis in various disease areas, with 77 per cent saying that they would be happy to test themselves at home.7 These findings indicate a promising future for decentralised testing methods, and show that patient uptake and adherence would likely be high, reinforcing the ongoing transition to self-testing care pathways. Although it is, of course, important to consider that self-testing may not be suitable for all health conditions and individuals. For example, certain mental health conditions, physical disabilities, healthcare equity and lack of technological expertise may give rise to reservations regarding independent disease monitoring.
Addressing bottlenecks in gastrointestinal diagnostics
One key group that could benefit from self-testing is individuals living with chronic gastrointestinal conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which affects more than 250,000 people in the UK and imposes an annual cost of approximately £720 million on the NHS.8 IBD is marked by unpredictable relapses and potentially debilitating symptoms – such as abdominal pain, diarrhoea and fatigue – that can significantly impact patients’ quality of life. The development of powerful biotherapeutics, such as infliximab and adalimumab, has transformed IBD treatment in recent years, yet up to 85 per cent of patients initially responsive to these drugs ultimately experience diminished effectiveness or loss of response (LOR).
Accurately and regularly monitoring of IBD symptoms and drug efficacy is crucial for preventing relapses and LOR, and this has traditionally involved frequent hospital visits for a combination of non-invasive tests, disease activity questionnaires and clinical indices, supported by colonoscopy when cases are escalated or uncertain. Although colonoscopies have long been the gold standard method for objectively investigating and monitoring inflammation in IBD patients, this method is invasive, expensive, requires a high skill level and carries an element of risk. Non-invasive serological markers have also been employed for decades as measures for assessing disease activity in patients with IBD, but can suffer from a lack of specificity.
These limitations, coupled with a reliance on in-person appointments, present a significant challenge in digestive disease diagnostics9 and therapeutic drug monitoring, and place considerable strain on healthcare services. This highlights the need for decentralised testing methods – such as monitoring of faecal calprotectin levels at the POC – to ensure effective disease control and treatment responses for IBD.8
The shift to POC testing in IBD management
The SmarTest® Calprotectin Home test from BIOHIT HealthCare is a simple-to-use stool test that enables individuals with inflammatory conditions – such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis – to quantitatively monitor their disease activity themselves outside of a hospital setting. This in vitro bowel inflammation test measures calprotectin using a lateral flow test – employing gold-conjugated anti-calprotectin antibodies – in conjunction with a smartphone app. The SmarTest app scans and quantitatively analyses the faecal calprotectin test result according to the intensity of the control and test lines on the lateral flow test, then automatically sends the results to the online portal, enabling the patient’s IBD clinical team to monitor treatment efficacy and disease progression remotely. The SmarTest Calprotectin Home test app also features a disease activity questionnaire for tracking IBD at home, providing a subjective, personalised approach to evaluating disease activity in conjunction with the bowel inflammation test. This approach requires minimum assay preparation and causes little disruption to a patient’s day-to-day life, presenting a far more convenient option for digestive disease monitoring than in-hospital testing.
Pioneering personalised care
Innovations in IBD management are transforming the patient experience, moving from a clinic-focused model to one that prioritises patient empowerment and autonomy. By incorporating at-home therapies and remote technologies – such as BIOHIT’s SmarTest Calprotectin Home test – patients can now actively monitor their condition and treatment responses from the convenience of their own homes. Smartphone-enabled testing further supports this personalised approach by enabling seamless communication between patients and healthcare providers, ensuring clinicians can stay informed about their patients’ health. These advancements are paving the way for a proactive, tailored approach to diagnostics, and represent a huge step forward in patient-centric, long-term IBD care.
Read our blog to find out more about how the transition to home testing is helping to improve disease outcomes, supporting patients to live well with IBD.
References
- NHS England. Integrating in vitro point of care diagnostics: guidance for urgent community response and virtual ward services. https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/integrating-in-vitro-point-of-care-diagnostics-guidance-for-urgent-community-response-and-virtual-ward-services/.
- Wickens C. Improving Access to Out-of-Hospital Care; 2023.
- Institute of Biomedical Science. Point of Care Testing: National Strategic Guidance for at Point of Need Testing; 2023.
- NHS. The NHS Long Term Plan. https://www.longtermplan.nhs.uk/publication/nhs-long-term-plan/.
- The King’s Fund. The government’s 10-year plan for health and care. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/projects/governments-long-term-plan-health-and-care.
- Woodhead K. Moving healthcare away from hospitals. Clinical Services Journal . Published online October 3, 2024.
- The Patients Association. Patient Experience of Diagnostics Report; 2024.
- UK Parliament. Written Evidence from Crohn’s and Colitis UK (LTC 36); 2013.
- Popov J, Farbod Y, Chauhan U, et al. Patients’ Experiences and Challenges in Living with Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Qualitative Approach. Clin Exp Gastroenterol. 2021;Volume 14:123-131. doi:10.2147/CEG.S303688