Wireless integrated biosensors for point-of-care diagnostic applications

Recent advances in integrated biosensors, wireless communication and power harvesting techniques are enticing researchers into spawning a new breed of point-of-care (POC) diagnostic devices that have attracted significant interest from industry. Among these, it is the ones equipped with wireless capabilities that drew our attention in this review paper. Indeed, wireless POC devices offer a great advantage, that of the possibility of exerting continuous monitoring of biologically relevant parameters, metabolites and other bio-molecules, relevant to the management of various morbid diseases such as diabetes, brain cancer, ischemia, and Alzheimer's. In this review paper, we examine three major categories of miniaturized integrated devices, namely; the implantable Wireless Bio-Sensors (WBSs), the wearable WBSs and the handheld WBSs. In practice, despite the aforesaid progress made in developing wireless platforms, early detection of health imbalances remains a grand challenge from both the technological and the medical points of view. This paper addresses such challenges and reports the state-of-the-art in this interdisciplinary field.