POCT technology characteristics and development at home and abroad

1. POCT market characteristics in Europe and America:

POCT products in Europe and the United States are mainly used in clinics, pharmacies, medical emergencies and home monitoring of patients. Compared with the household market, POCT in the medical market has become one of the fast-growing branches in the European and American medical fields, with an annual growth rate of about 10-12%. Its POCT test products mainly focus on some market segments such as blood sugar, blood gas/electrolyte, coagulation, infectious diseases, pregnancy indicators, cardiovascular, tumor, drugs, etc. Among them, blood glucose is a large market in the POCT field, while myocardial markers is a rapidly growing field. Traditional gold chromatography qualitative analysis technology still holds a place in Europe and the United States, mainly focusing on pregnancy, drugs, pathogen antibody detection. With the prevalence and outbreak of some tropical viruses, some new virus antibody detection projects have appeared, such as dengue virus and Zika virus.

2. POCT product development in Europe and America:

With the development of detection technology, POCT products in Europe and the United States also experienced their own development path. The first-generation POCT detection products are mainly qualitative detection by chromatography or percolation, targeting common biochemical indexes and easily detected macromolecular antibodies. With the progress of technology, POCT products of the second generation have been developed for the detection of more complex biomarkers with the help of microfluidic, microelectronic and microarray chip nucleic acid detection. Examples include CD4+ cell counts, drug-resistant TB and HIV viral load tests. After entering the third generation of POCT, up to dozens of markers can be detected on a protein chip at the same time, and the application field is expanded to nucleic acid sequencing and protein analysis. Its products also tend to be serialized, miniaturized and household, and even appear to complete quantitative analysis directly through detection cards without relying on instruments, or complete detection through mobile phones, to achieve Bluetooth or wireless data transmission.

In general, POCT products in Europe and the United States mainly focus on the target market of clinic, medical emergency and household use, so it is mainly "single portion" and the single test time is relatively long. Taking Abbott iSTAT and Roche Cobas h232, which have a high market share in Europe and the United States, for example, these handheld devices are light in size and have a wide coverage of test items. All of them are suitable for individual measurement, and the average test time is about 10-15 minutes. Therefore, after these products enter the POCT market in China, where the laboratory of large medical institutions is the main application scenario, their role is limited to a certain extent.