Biomedical instrumentation: Focus toward point-of-care devices

Biomedical instrumentation (BMI) deals with the measuring, recording, and transmitting biological signals from and to the human body to enable development of new algorithms and instruments to solve health-related problems. Development of BMI involves interdisciplinary understanding in different fields such as engineering technologies, materials science, and medical science which finally aim to improve human health by timely diagnosis and suitable therapeutic measures. These have immense importance in medical procedures for data collection and their analysis to aid decision-making and planning of treatment regimen. Typical BMI assemblies consist of sensors to detect bioelectrical, biophysical, and biochemical parameters with a safe interface which couples the biological surface with arrangements to control different influencing parameters. Additionally, some of the BMI may have an actuator, which can deliver external agents via direct or indirect contact to help the therapeutic aspects of devices. Electronic interfaces are calibrated using computational units with different electrical characteristics like signal-to-noise ratio, efficiency, bandwidth, and safety. Other necessary components include the power supply, output unit which provides the display and storage of data. This review summarizes different technological interventions pertaining to the BMI, their classification, and applications in various diagnostic and therapeutic domains.