The future of Point of Care testing: A pathway-led approach for healthcare leaders

• Timely diagnostic insights can help clinicians make earlier clinical decisions and reduce avoidable steps across the care pathway

• Point of Care testing can expand diagnostic access across hospitals, primary care, community services, and underserved areas while helping preserve specialist capacity

• Sustainable Point of Care systems require defined clinical pathways, laboratory oversight, trained operators, quality assurance, and connected data

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 4.7 billion people cannot access safe, affordable, and quality-assured diagnostic services.¹ Yet diagnostic results influence an estimated 70% of healthcare decisions, while diagnostics account for only 3-5% of healthcare spending.² As demand for care grows and health systems face persistent workforce constraints, making better use of available diagnostic capacity becomes pivotal.

The future of Point of Care (POC) testing, therefore, depends on identifying where testing within the clinical encounter can change the course of care. Shifting the emphasis from faster testing to purposeful decision-making is central to realizing the potential of POC testing. When a reliable result is available while the patient is present, clinicians can act on it immediately—informing decisions about treatment, referral, further testing, and other aspects of care. In this way, POC testing not only shortens the distance between asking the clinical question and acting on the answer, it offers diagnostic insights that can be meaningfully embedded within care pathways.³

Collecting a sample is just the beginning. What matters is how quickly its result can inform care. For many patients, there can be a significant gap between testing, receiving a result, and deciding what to do next. That gap can translate into repeated handoffs between services and delays in treatment or referral.⁴ For healthcare systems already operating under pressure, each extra step can consume time and capacity that could be directed toward patients with more complex needs.

A faster result creates value when it leads to a timely, appropriate course of action within the care pathway. POC testing should be built around a defined clinical decision, with clear guidance on result interpretation and response. The test should also not be considered in isolation from the clinical process around it.

This means starting with the decision rather than the technology. Which clinical questions would benefit from an immediate diagnostic result? What action would follow a positive, negative, or inconclusive result? And when is confirmatory testing or escalation required? Answering these questions upfront helps ensure that POC testing supports clinical practice rather than adding another step to it. When the pathway is designed this way, POC testing can help reduce uncertainty without creating new bottlenecks. 

The key question for healthcare leaders is therefore not always, “How quickly can we get the result?” but “What clinical decision will this result enable?”

POC testing can support decision-making across the care continuum, from hospital settings and primary care to community clinics, pharmacies, and rural or underserved settings. The value varies by context, but the principle is the same: making relevant diagnostic information available where it can influence the next step in care.

In primary care, for example, N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) testing can help assess whether heart failure is less likely in patients with symptoms such as breathlessness and ankle swelling, supporting a more informed decision about further investigation.⁵ When the result is available at the Point of Care, clinicians can use that information during the consultation to help determine whether further cardiac assessment is needed, rather than waiting for a laboratory result before deciding on the next step.

Another key use case is D-dimer, a blood marker used to help assess suspected venous thromboembolism (VTE). This test can similarly support VTE pathways when combined with clinical probability assessment, helping rule out deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and identifying patients who need imaging.⁶ Having the result available during a primary care appointment can help clinicians make an earlier decision about whether imaging or further assessment is required.

For patients presenting with acute respiratory symptoms in a primary care setting, C-reactive protein (CRP) testing can provide an objective measure of inflammation alongside clinical assessment, helping clinicians decide whether antibiotics are appropriate. When CRP results are available during the consultation, clinicians can discuss the findings with the patient and make a prescribing decision, rather than waiting for laboratory testing and potentially requiring further contact or follow-up. Evidence shows that CRP POC testing may reduce antibiotic prescribing while supporting more informed conversations between clinicians and patients.⁷

Across these settings, Point of Care healthcare technologies can help reduce unnecessary repeat appointments and referrals, while allowing specialist services to focus their capacity on patients who need more complex assessment.

Decentralized diagnostics complement central laboratories, rather than operate separately from them. As POC testing expands into different care settings, laboratory teams have an important role in assay selection, validation, quality assurance, governance, and operator competency. Comprehensive oversight helps ensure that testing performed outside the laboratory meets proper standards and that results can be trusted wherever they are generated.³

Connectivity is equally important. POC testing results need to flow securely into patient records and remain visible to clinicians involved in the patient’s care. Without this connection, a rapid result can become another isolated piece of information rather than part of a coordinated diagnostic process. Well-designed point of care solutions should connect decentralized testing with central laboratory services, including integration with laboratory information management systems (LIMS) and wider patient records, helping maintain quality, data, and clinical responsibility across the system.³

Moving from successful POC testing pilot projects to sustainable POC systems in healthcare requires leaders to consider how the models will fit into clinical pathways and how services will be supported as they grow. 

Figure 1. A framework for evaluating Point of Care systems in healthcare

These considerations reinforce the principle that POC testing is a pathway intervention, not simply a technology deployment. Strong models start with the care decision that needs to improve and build the testing service around it, ensuring that every result has a specified place within a connected and accountable pathway.

The future of Point of Care testing is not about moving every diagnostic test out of the laboratory. It is about identifying where a reliable result, available during the clinical encounter, can improve the next decision in a patient’s care. Healthcare leaders should begin with the pathway, define the action associated with each result, and establish laboratory oversight, training, governance, and connectivity before scaling. Applied selectively, Point of Care solutions can complement central laboratories while expanding access and making better use of clinical and specialist capacity.