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The demand for portable biosensors is growing in a world faced with health problems such as infectious diseases and chronic diseases. What if the health professional could tell you the results the same day you arrived? Or that you could monitor your health even though you live far away from a health center? There are multiple areas in which portable biosensors are applicable besides health care. They are also extremely important for fast detection of biological warfare agents and in agriculture as plant diseases spread and develop resistance to pesticides unnoticed.

Luckily, there is a lot of research and prototypes being made to overcome the many challenges facing development of portable biosensors. Early examples of portable biosensors are the test used for self-monitoring for blood glucose (year 1963) and pregnancy tests which works as an immunoassay. Nowadays, the biosensors are starting to get even more sophisticated. They integrate wireless data transfer, scaled down lab techniques for DNA and other biological material and most importantly can reduce global health care costs. They can even be integrated with a modern cell phone as an important component, making an excellent user interface, imaging and powerful data processing.

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The challenge lies in making the portable biosensors available, affordable and reproducible at a large scale.
This requires strong regulation to ensure the quality and reliability of the biosensors is kept. It is also important that technology developers make it possible for the biosensors to be applied in resource-limited settings.

Reference

Srinivasan, B, & Tung, S 2015, 'Development and Applications of Portable Biosensors',Journal Of Laboratory Automation, MEDLINE, EBSCO host, viewed 28 June 2015.