Abstract:
The necessity for fast, accessible and reliable information in a
complex-connected world generated in the last 40 years an impressive
development of the "lab-on-a-chip" type technology based on miniaturized
devices able to integrate in a single chip, one or several analyses. The areas of
application for such type of devices are various, ranging from clinical
diagnostic to evaluations of food substrates or environmental monitoring. The
capabilities of "lab-on-a-chip" can be extended beyond the quasi-limited
classical monitoring, thus providing valuable chemical and biological
information that can be digitized by using centralized/decentralized facilities for
data storage, remotely, thus being more easily available to users. The "lab-ona-
chip" materials and manufacturing technologies present net advantages (low
cost, high parallelization, ease of use and compactness, reduction of human
error, faster response time and diagnosis, low volume samples) but also and
some limitations (miniaturization increases the signal-to-noise ratio so that
most "lab-on-a-chip" technologies are not yet ready for industrialization, the
mandatory external control system expands the final size and costs, the
widespread accessibility can generate erroneous fears for an untrained public).
