Lab-on-chip technology for chronic disease diagnosis

Various types of chronic diseases (CD) are the leading causes of disability and death worldwide. While those diseases are chronic in nature, accurate and timely clinical decision making is critically required. Current diagnosis procedures are often lengthy and costly, which present a major bottleneck for effective CD healthcare. Rapid, reliable and low-cost diagnostic tools at point-of-care (PoC) are therefore on high demand. Owing to miniaturization, lab-on-chip (LoC) technology has high potential to enable improved biomedical applications in terms of low-cost, high-throughput, ease-of-operation and analysis. In this direction, research toward developing new LoC-based PoC systems for CD diagnosis is fast growing into an emerging area. Some studies in this area began to incorporate digital and mobile technologies. Here we review the recent developments of this area with the focus on chronic respiratory diseases (CRD), diabetes, and chronic kidney diseases (CKD). We conclude by discussing the challenges, opportunities and future perspectives of this field.