A Smart Mobile Lab-on-Chip-Based Medical Diagnostics System Architecture Designed for Evolvability

Unprecedented knowledge levels in life sciences along with technological advances in micro-and nanotechnologies and microfluidics have recently conditioned the advent of Lab-on-Chip (LoC) devices for In-Vitro Medical Testing (IVMT). Combined with smart-mobile technologies, LoCs are pervasively giving rise to opportunities to better diagnose disease, predict and monitor personalised treatment efficacy, or provide healthcare decision-making support at the Point-of-Care (PoC). Although made increasingly available to the consumer market, the adoption of LoC-based PoC In-Vitro Medical Testing (IVMT) systems is still in its infancy. This attrition partly pertains to the intricacy of designing and developing complex systems, destined to be used sporadically, in a fast-pace evolving technological paradigm. System evolvability is therefore key in the design process and constitutes the main motivation for this work. We introduce a smart-mobile and LoC-based system architecture designed for evolvability. By propagating LoC programmability, instrumentation, and control tools to the high-level abstraction smart-mobile software layer, our architecture facilitates the realisation of new use-cases and the accommodation for incremental LoC-technology developments. We demonstrate these features with an implementation allowing the interfacing of LoCs embedding current-or impedance-based biosensors such as Silicon Nanowire Field Effect Transistors (SiNW-FETs) or electrochemical transducers. Structural modifications of these LoCs or changes in their specific operation may be addressed by the sole reengineering of the mobile-software layer, minimising system upgrade development and validation costs and efforts.