The PoC-ID project brings together 13 proven academic and corporate expert teams from 7 European countries to address the increasing demand for rapid and sensitive point-of-care diagnostics, to reduce healthcare costs, increase quality of life, and improve the treatment with a focus on infectious diseases, one of the world’s leading causes of morbidity and hospitalisation.

A prototype user-friendly point of care (PoC) platform will be developed to target unmet needs for early and fast detection of viral respiratory infections, using the paradigm of respiratory syncytial infection (RSV), a major cause of disease burden in children but also a major diagnostics and management challenge in the daily practice.

The PoC-ID device will combine the detection of both host and pathogen biomarkers in the same sample, leading to a rapid, cheap and accurate diagnosis and prognosis, providing almost real-time results. By multi-parameter analysis of infectious agents and host biomarkers, the sensors will support the medical decision for the selection of the best treatment strategy: hospitalisation or send home; empirical antibiotic treatment, supportive care or wait and see.

The PoC-ID platform may also be used for monitoring disease progression and may guide the assessment of new therapeutic and prophylactic drugs under development for RSV infection.