Point-of-care testing of portable blood coagulation detectors using optical sensors

A portable optical blood coagulation detector is proposed for point-of-care testing for determining prothrombin time (PT). The detector is applicable to sending the results to a computer via wireless transmission. The integrated apparatus comprises an optical module, a signal processing module, and a communication module for directly sensing real-time changes of transmittance during the blood coagulation process. The efficacy of the proposed device was validated with patients' whole blood specimens. Only a small amount of whole blood (approximately 60 μl) is required. The mean relative error of the PT values obtained using the proposed device is 4.8 ± 3.5% (less than one second) compared with the PT values obtained using the standard manual PT method (n = 26). The two testing platforms have highly correlated results (r = 0.997, p < 0.001). The proposed device has advantages of portability, ease of operation, real-time results, accuracy, carrying a potential for remote monitoring in the personalized long-distance healthcare industry.