India, Jan. 23 -- India's healthcare system continues to face rising disease burdens alongside limited access to timely diagnostic services. In many rural and peri-urban communities, people wait far too long for a diagnosis.Point-of-care diagnostic tools, or POCDs, provide a practical way to move testing from distant laboratories directly into the community settings where clinical decisions are made.

POCDs are diagnostic tests conducted at or near the site where the patient is receiving care and can deliver results within minutes or hours instead of days. Research summarized by Pai and colleagues shows that POCDs reduce the time between the onset of symptoms, diagnosis, and the start of treatment, enabling faster and more effective patie...