The development of lab-on-a-chip technology and its applications in biochemical and biomedical analyses has, during the last two decades, led to the potential realisation of portable and on-site detection devices, the so-called point-of-care (PoC) detection systems. These are essentially cheap, easy-to-handle systems, offering rapid sample-to-answer results to non-technical operators. In this perspective, we do not review all the current advances of Lab-on-a-chip techniques for the realisation of PoC. Instead, we aim to provide insight into what we foresee as the three most important factors to play the essential roles for succeeding in making commercially viable PoC pathogen-detection devices. The three insights are namely: the utilizations of (i) disposable polymer (microfluidic) chips, (ii) the implementation of surface-bound (or solid-phase) nucleic-acid amplification techniques and (iii) relying (more) on open-source hardware and software.

在过去的二十年中，芯片实验室技术的发展及其在生化和生物医学分析中的应用导致潜在地实现了便携式和现场检测设备，即所谓的即时护理（PoC）检测系统。这些本质上是廉价，易于处理的系统，可为非技术操作人员提供快速的样品到答案的结果。从这个角度来看，我们不会回顾用于实现PoC的芯片实验室技术的所有最新进展。取而代之的是，我们旨在提供洞察力，使我们预见最重要的三个因素，这些因素在成功制造商业上可行的PoC病原体检测设备中起着至关重要的作用。这三种见解分别是：（i）一次性聚合物（微流体）芯片的利用，