Operational Assessment of Point-of-Care Diagnostics in Primary Healthcare Clinics

Several new diagnostics generation devices are specifically designed to assist clinical staff replacing the equivalent laboratory tests and allowing a wide range of disease diagnoses to be performed immediately at the POC. The clinical impact of POC diagnostics has been shown in a variety of diseases conditions, particularly HIV/AIDS and TB. The World Health Organisation (WHO) called for new clinical diagnostics methods that are designed to function in setting with limited access to laboratory services. Thus, leading to an increase in marketing, manufacturing and development of POC diagnostics instruments and reagents for use in clinical POC. The advent of POC tests in South Africa has led to an improved control of infectious diseases such as HIV and mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB), in this era of drug-resistance. Increased availability of POC test in rural and resource-limited settings is encouraged.

To maximize the impact of novel diagnostics on patient outcomes in resource-limited settings, the implementation of new diagnostics must be performed within a given context and culture. However, the population-level of diagnostic utility in South Africa is not known. The investigators aim to estimate the level of POC diagnostic availability, usage and need in rural South Africa, using a cross sectional survey of rural primary healthcare (PHC) clinics in KwaZulu Natal (KZN). The survey focused on the conditions for which the respondent considered a POC test might help improve their clinical decision making during patient care. Determining the current accessibility, availability, usage and need for POC diagnostics in rural and resource limited settings can help inform developers and implementers of POC diagnostic services on context-specific deployment and implementation of POC diagnostics to address the unmet needs of patients in these settings.