Electrochemical Biosensors in Point-of-Care Devices: Recent Advances and Future Trends

The use of biosensors in point-of-care (POC) testing devices has attracted considerable attention in the past few years, mainly because of their high specificity, portability, and relatively low cost. Coupling these devices with miniaturized electrochemical transducers has shown great potential toward simple, rapid, and cost-effective analysis that can be performed in the field, especially for healthcare, environmental monitoring, and food quality control. For this reason, the number of publications in this field has grown exponentially over the past decade, making it a trending topic in current research. Although great improvement has been achieved in the field of electrochemical biosensing, there are still some challenges to overcome, especially concerning the improvement of sensing materials and miniaturization. In this Review, we summarize some of the most recent advances achieved in POC electrochemical biosensor applications, focusing on new materials and modifiers for biorecognition developed to improve sensitivity, specificity, stability, and response time.