Toward Next Generation Clinical Diagnostic Instruments: Scaling and New Processing Paradigms

Looking toward future clinical diagnostic instruments, there is little debate as to the features that need improvement over the current state-of-the-art. Increasing the speed and sensitivity of the assays, while reducing costs are clear goals. Recently, it has become possible to microminiaturize fluidic and sensing components using micromachining and precision injection molding. There has been a large amount of interest and effort in the area of miniaturization of such systems, yet not all of the properties of fluidics and sensing methods improve as they are drastically reduced in size. It is clear that implementing miniaturized diagnostic instruments is not a matter of simply “shrinking” their conventional counterparts, nor of automating existing manual procedures. What is required to harness the full potential of scaling technologies is the use of design methods that take into account scaling effects and the development of completely new processing approaches. Beginning with a general overview of the relevant scaling principles, sample preparation and detection approaches are addressed in this context.