You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 4, Issue 8
  • Current and future use of point-of-care tests in primary care: an international survey in Australia, Belgium, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA

Article Text

Article menu
XML
Diagnostics
Research
Current and future use of point-of-care tests in primary care: an international survey in Australia, Belgium, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA
  1. Jeremy Howick1,
  2. Jochen W L Cals2,
  3. Caroline Jones1,
  4. Christopher P Price1,
  5. Annette Plüddemann1,
  6. Carl Heneghan1,
  7. Marjolein Y Berger3,
  8. Frank Buntinx2,4,
  9. John Hickner5,
  10. Wilson Pace6,
  11. Tony Badrick7,
  12. Ann Van den Bruel1,
  13. Caroline Laurence8,
  14. Henk C van Weert9,
  15. Evie van Severen4,
  16. Adriana Parrella8,
  17. Matthew Thompson10
  1. 1Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  2. 2Deptartment of Family Medicine, CAPHRI School for Public Health and Primary Care, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
  3. 3Department of General Practice, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
  4. 4Academic Center for General Practice, Leuven, Belgium
  5. 5Family Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA
  6. 6Department of Family Medicine, University of Colorado, Aurora, Colorado, USA
  7. 7Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine, Bond University, Queensland, Australia
  8. 8Discipline of General Practice, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
  9. 9Department of General Practice, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  10. 10Department of Family Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Jeremy Howick; Jeremy.howick{at}phc.ox.ac.uk

Abstract

Objective Despite the growing number of point-of-care (POC) tests available, little research has assessed primary care clinician need for such tests. We therefore aimed to determine which POC tests they actually use or would like to use (if not currently available in their practice).

Design Cross-sectional survey.

Setting Primary care in Australia, Belgium (Flanders region only), the Netherlands, the UK and the USA.

Participants Primary care doctors (general practitioners, family physicians).

Main measures We asked respondents to (1) identify conditions for which a POC test could help inform diagnosis, (2) from a list of tests provided: evaluate which POC tests they currently use (and how frequently) and (3) determine which tests (from that same list) they would like to use in the future (and how frequently).

Results 2770 primary care clinicians across five countries responded. Respondents in all countries wanted POC tests to help them diagnose acute conditions (infections, acute cardiac disease, pulmonary embolism/deep vein thrombosis), and some chronic conditions (diabetes, anaemia). Based on the list of POC tests provided, the most common tests currently used were: urine pregnancy, urine leucocytes or nitrite and blood glucose. The most commonly reported tests respondents expressed a wish to use in the future were: D-dimer, troponin and chlamydia. The UK and the USA reported a higher actual and desired use for POC tests than Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands. Our limited data suggest (but do not confirm) representativeness.

Conclusions Primary care clinicians in all five countries expressed a desire for POC tests to help them diagnose a range of acute and chronic conditions. Rates of current reported use and desired future use were generally high for a small selection of POC tests, but varied across countries. Future research is warranted to explore how specific POC tests might improve primary care.

  • Epidemiology
  • Chemical Pathology
  • General Medicine (see Internal Medicine)

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2014-005611

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Supplementary materials

    • Supplementary Data

      This web only file has been produced by the BMJ Publishing Group from an electronic file supplied by the author(s) and has not been edited for content.

      Files in this Data Supplement: