POCTIFY Insights
Ideas and analysis on point of care testing.
In-depth, independent writing on the economics, quality, policy and future of testing outside the laboratory. Free to read, written to make you think.
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How good is good enough? Setting and verifying analytical performance for POCT
Before a point-of-care device goes live, someone has to decide how much bias and imprecision this clinical use can tolerate, and then prove the device meets it on site. Most services skip the first step.
GovernanceOne patient, five numbers: identity and record matching when POCT leaves the hospital
A correct result attached to the wrong person, or to nobody, is a patient-safety failure. Outside the hospital the identifiers multiply, and the controls that hold them together thin out.
PolicyThe analyser on your network: assuring connected point-of-care devices
A connected analyser is a networked computer with a clinical job. A buyer-side guide to the cyber and interface evidence POCT leads should ask for before go-live.
Quality scienceThe Drop That Decides: The Science of the Finger-Prick Sample
Most point-of-care testing rests on a drop of capillary blood that few operators were ever taught about. What is in it, how it differs from venous blood, and how technique moves the result.
GovernanceBeyond the Device: What I Told LabVine About Governing Point-of-Care Testing
Moving a device closer to the patient is a local fix. The result is a system outcome. A write-up of my LabVine Activation Session, with the recording, the five dependencies and the questions to take back to your own service.
Quality scienceEvery Link Has to Hold: The Chain of Trust Behind a Point-of-Care Result
A point-of-care result is the last link in a long, mostly invisible chain. It is only ever as trustworthy as its weakest link, and that link is rarely the device.
PerspectivePoint of Care Testing in Elite Football: Bringing the Lab to the Athlete
Elite football has quietly become a point-of-care testing environment: lactate on the pitch, creatine kinase from a finger-prick, and a World Cup medical room where teams bring their own lab. What it measures, what the evidence really shows, and the quality lesson for every POCT service.
PracticeBuilding a POCT Service From the Ground Up
Notes from a talk I gave at a community diagnostics forum in Manchester: what it takes to build point-of-care testing that holds up, and why the same discipline travels from the hospital into the community.
PolicyPharmacy First and the POCT Quality Gap
Moving testing into community pharmacy is good policy. The lab quality system that makes a result trustworthy has not moved with it. Here is how to close it.
PolicyVirtual Wards and the Diagnostics That Power Them
Hospital at home quietly runs on point-of-care testing. Design the diagnostics in, or you have simply moved clinical risk into the living room.
EconomicsThe hidden economics of free POCT devices
A placed analyser at zero capital cost is a pricing strategy, not a gift. Here is where the money really goes, and how to procure on total cost instead.
TechnologyAI in POCT: Where It Helps, and Where a Human Must Stay Accountable
Every vendor is selling AI for point-of-care testing. Here is how to separate genuine near-term value from confident, unvalidated hype.
PolicyCommunity Diagnostic Centres and the POCT Opportunity
With around 170 sites now open, community diagnostic centres are moving diagnostics closer to home. Done properly, they can prove decentralised point-of-care testing and rigorous quality are not opposites.
Quality scienceThe EQA Blind Spot: A Good Score, A Bad Result
A passing external quality assessment score is reassuring and necessary. It is not proof your patient results are right. Here is why, and what to do.
WorkforceThe Competency Time Bomb in Point-of-Care Testing
One hospital can carry thousands of POCT operators churning through every shift. The spreadsheet was never going to hold, and lapsed operators keep testing.
ClinicalSame Patient, Different Number: The POCT Harmonisation Gap
Two point-of-care devices can give the same blood two different numbers, and near a decision threshold that gap can change what happens to the patient.
PolicyIVD Regulation Is Changing: What POCT Teams Need to Know
The rules governing your tests are being rewritten on both sides of the Channel, and point-of-care testing sits right in the blast radius. Here is what to do.
SustainabilityThe carbon cost of convenience: is POCT really greener?
Point-of-care testing is sold as the green option, but single-use cartridges, cold chain and wasted QC tell the other half of the story.
ClinicalMultiplex respiratory testing and the post-pandemic POCT legacy
The pandemic's real legacy is not the COVID test but the expectation of a fast answer, and the multiplex panels that name the virus in one swab. That power raises the quality bar.
GovernanceWhen the patient is the operator
Home testing, virtual wards and self-test kits move the operator role onto the patient. Our governance still assumes a trained professional holds the device.
GovernanceThe recall nobody can close
A lab quarantines one fridge. A distributed POCT estate has to find every device, every lot and every patient result the fault touched, and prove it.
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