Future of Molecular Diagnostics: The Example of Infectious Diseases

Advances in molecular diagnostics technologies offer clinicians improved infectious diseases tests for use in a hospital setting with regards to specificity, sensitivity and turn-around time to results. These advances have the potential to contribute in a positive way to patient care owing to improved decision making on optimal therapeutic approaches. Such advances may be used independent of traditional culture-based methods, or in some instances complementing culture. In this chapter we review a number of emerging technologies which can be used for both targeted and non-targeted molecular diagnostics in the clinical setting which may play a central role in the future including fully integrated sample in - result out nucleic acid-based tests, digital PCR, mass spectrometry and next-generation sequencing.which take from 24 hours up to a number of weeks.Identification of a specific microorganisms causing infection allows a clinician to make an informed decision as to the optimal therapeutic approach to take for a patient as opposed to unnecessary use of broad spectrum antibiotics.The source of outbreaks of infections and transmission dynamics can be identified in a timelier manner.The ability to quantify the number of a microorganisms present in a sample allows a clinician to determine colonization versus infection.In this chapter, we will discuss the current state of the art in molecular diagnostics of infectious diseases and describe some emerging technologies which are likely to be adapted to the clinical sector over the coming years.