Advances in point-of-care optical biosensing for underserved populations

Portable optical biosensors have been created over the last 30 years for detecting molecular and cellular targets. More recently, advances in algorithms, readers, and materials have expanded the applications of optical biosensors with the use of handheld, wearable and implantable sensor platforms. In this paper, a variety of materials supporting the biomolecular recognition and amplification approaches are discussed along with their systems-level advantages for integration with optical readers and advanced algorithms. Based on the needs of underserved populations, opportunities for translating such optical biosensing systems to the point-of-care are also covered.