Lab-on-a-chip – Reform, Perform, and Transform

TL;DR: Lab-on-a-chip devices offer faster, cost-effective solutions for healthcare challenges, facilitating early disease diagnosis, personalized treatment, and point-of-care diagnostics, while reducing reliance on animal testing and alleviating resource constraints in underserved regions.

Abstract: Lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices possess substantial potential in today’s biomedical landscape, as they can provide faster, more efficient, and cost-effective solutions to various healthcare challenges. In everyday clinical settings, these miniature devices facilitate early disease diagnosis, patient monitoring, personalized treatment, and point-of-care diagnostics. Similarly, they offer diverse applications in the core pharmaceutical domain, including drug discovery, drug screening, drug synthesis, and drug delivery. In certain instances, they effectively reduce the reliance on animal testing. Moreover, in regions with limited resources, miniature devices can help alleviate the demand for highly trained personnel and extensive laboratory infrastructure. Therefore, in this chapter, we aim to share our perspective on how miniature LOC devices have the potential to reform, perform, and transform healthcare systems for the betterment of mankind.