There is no question that the Cue Health Monitoring System is best-in-class POCT device available on the market today. However Cue Health can not achieve a global market reach unless it has a product offering closer to the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for “ASSURED” - affordable and off-the-shelf, sensitive, specific, user friendly, reliable, efficient and time-saving; field deployable; and most significantly, instrument-free with no external electrical and optical system requirement, POC device. The broadly available paper-based NAAT devices do meet most of the ASSURED criteria, they are inexpensive, easily disposable, responsive to biomolecule conformations and interactions, and are good sample and reagent carriers, making them ideal substrates for use in remote and resource-poor setting. It is possible to envision developing an integrated paper/membrane based microfluidic device for instrument-free RNA isolation, reverse transcription, amplification and detection that can be performed at room temperature. The successful development of this type of PRT device by Cue Health, either through partnership, acquisition, licensing is a step forward towards the goal of developing a complete instrument-free integrated NAAT system for POC diagnosis that can have broad global market reach and establish preeminent brand recognition with full product complement.
