Photonic Biosensing for Point-of-Care Diagnostics Systems

Dear Colleagues,

In the last decades, medical diagnostics has gained a critical role in healthcare, and a progressively increasing effort has been observed to improve the quality of services for patients, with remarkable cost reductions for health systems. Clear advantages come from the adoption of electronic patient records and the better organization and management of first aid centers and hospitals to reduce the average hospitalization period for each patient, with continuous monitoring at home after the hospital discharge.

The changes in health systems worldwide are also enabled by the spread of efficient and effective point-of-care (POC) technologies. These biomedical systems integrate high performance and accuracy biosensors, and have characteristics of high portability and ease of handling, thus allowing for their use even by non-expert users in every place with no laboratory infrastructures, and providing early detection and the diagnosis of several widespread diseases, such as viral infections and allergies.

The future target is to develop next generation POC systems based on biosensors, with a stronger efficiency and better resolution in order to enable their use in diseases, such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases, and genetics, for which prevention in the first stages represents the main reason for survival.

In this scenario, photonic biosensors have distinct properties and advantages in comparison to other sensing technologies, such as a high sensitivity, short times to results, low volumes to perform the sensing, compactness and high integration level, multi-analyte detection, and portable operation capability.

The aim of this Special Issue is to collect original contributions on the advances on photonic biosensors for point-of-care systems, including, but not limited to, new concept devices, functional materials, design, technological processes, experimental testing, and signal processing, as well as their integration at a system level.

Keywords:

• Photonic biosensors
• Optoelectronic biosensors
• Optical biosensors
• Micro-/nano-technological fabrication of biosensors
• Bio functionalization
• Microfluidics
• Data processing
• Portable biosensing systems
• Diseases diagnostics

Prof. Dr. Caterina Ciminelli
Guest Editor

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