In fact, most of the current reviews on POC dealt with singular medical applications providing information about their performance with respect to centralized laboratory instruments. This review firstly considers the commercially available POCs, sorting them by medical application and analyzing some key features such as time to provide results, accuracy and imprecision. The analytical performance of a device is assessed through imprecision, quantified by calculating the within-run coefficient of variation (CV) from the test result data of a given device, and accuracy, estimated by means of a coefficient of correlation (r) from the set of data obtained from the two devices-analyzer (POC) and a reference or standard instrument. To evaluate a safe and reliable POC, it is important to consider its sensitivity (the percentage of true positive results), specificity (percentage of true negative results) and positive and negative predictive values (PPV, NPV, respectively) according to the disease prevalence in the considered population. If, on one hand, laboratory results can take from several hours to few days, on the other hand, POCs reduce analysis time from hours to few seconds, therefore, gaining relevant importance especially in emergency conditions (Table 1). The latter are used by patients for homecare and by healthcare professionals. POCs are commercially available either as small bench-top analyzers or as hand-held devices. It is one of the innovations that impact potentially on the quality and rapidity of care, as well as on system redesign of a more patient-centred care approach. The point-of-care (POC) is generally used outside the central laboratory to facilitate the patient’s faster diagnosis and treatment. These features gain great relevance also in the veterinary practice, where patients’ compliance is generally poor, available sample volumes are quite far from the human ones and analysis costs are higher. POC devices are particularly useful for clinicians since they hold the potential to deliver rapid and accurate results in an inexpensive and less invasive way with an overall improvement of patients' quality of life in terms of time spent at the point-of-care and sample volume withdrawn. We searched Pubmed/Medline using the keywords “point” “of” “care” “device”, selected papers from 1984 to 2019 on the basis of their content and summarized the features in tables.įast turnaround time and overall good reliability, in terms of accuracy and imprecision, were observed for most of POCs included in the research. This review discusses some key features of commercially available point of care (POC) devices, such as time to provide results, accuracy and imprecision, in several medical and veterinary fields. Conventional technologies are limited to laboratories, which are expensive, require moderate to great volumes of biological fluids and generally create great discomfort among patients. Updated and precise molecular diagnostics are essential in disease identification, treatment and management.