Whispering photons : on-chip biophotonic integrated circuits for point-of-care diagnostics

Abstract

The pressure of increasing service demands and improving turnaround times of results in healthcare industry require the development of more rapid, point-of-care and personalized diagnostic tools. Light is ubiquitous in biology and offers various elegant solutions for diagnostic, therapies and theranostic applications. At present, there is not a single biomedical application where optical components are not applied. If we can come up with a framework that can miniaturize these optical components on a chip, it can offer various advantages in terms of scalability, portability, cost and improved performance for real-time monitoring and bedside treatment. On these lines, we propose bio-photonic integrated circuits (Bio-PICs) for point-of-care diagnostics. These circuits rely on moving photons in photonic waveguides (similar to electrons in your electronic chips) to provide on-chip sensing solution. Specifically, we present Bio-PICs for aerosol spectroscopy, blood coagulometry, and TB breath analyzer test.