NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2025 19GOVERNMENT CIO OUTLOOKhome-based molecular testing for e.g. Influenza or the next pandemic pathogen may provide an efficient tool for controlling the disease epidemiology compared to testing at local healthcare facilities or regional test centers.The demand from physicians as well as from patients for near-patient testing has been steadily rising and in the tail-end of the COVID-19 pandemic, where we will soon reacquaint ourselves with Influenza and RSV, this demand will surely continue to increase. Especially tests with a direct impact on patient management (e.g., whether to contact isolate a patient or whether to prescribe antimicrobial treatment) will likely be widely implemented. The extensive and un-precedented test activity seen during the COVID-19 pandemic may not only have changed the view of healthcare facility managers on infectious disease testing from merely a cost to a necessary part of efficient clinical patient management ­ but has also brought the concept of diagnostics to the attention of the general population as a highly relevant part of everyday life. As laboratory workers, we no longer have to venture into long (boring) explanations about the importance of our work at dinner parties ­ we may even find ourselves at the center of attention.But every coin has a flip side. Diagnostics performed outside the controlled environment of the clinical laboratory, especially tests performed outside healthcare facilities and outside the control and influence of clinical experts ­ e.g., in pharmacies or in patient homes - may lead to inappropriate use of the diagnostic tests, wrongful interpretation of the test results, lack of quality control procedures, no capture of test results in electronic patient records and compromised local and national surveillance. Moreover, if infectious disease specialists and the clinical microbiology laboratory fail to claim ownership over infectious disease testing no matter where these tests are performed, we will surely miss out on important pieces of the puzzle and we will definitely lose influence on the overall strategy regarding infectious disease testing, use and quality. These downsides may all be addressed by detailed and stringent strategies for implementation, but failure to do so may allow the downsides to overshadow the upsides of this new and exciting technology. We are now facing the most disruptive paradigm shift since the dawn of clinical microbiology--moving rapid molecular testing out of the controlled environment of the diagnostic laboratory and close to the patient--the so-called "Point-of-Care" (PoC) diagnostics.
< Page 9 | Page 11 >