In the coming years, genetic test results will be increasingly used as indicators that
influence medical decision-making. With chronic disease on the rise and the
continuing global spread of infectious disease, novel instruments able to detect
relevant mutations in a point-of-care setting are being developed to facilitate this
increased demand in personalized health care. However, diagnosis for such demand
often requires laboratory facilities and skilled personnel, meaning that diagnostic tests
are restricted by time and access. This thesis presents a novel configuration for Ion
sensitive Field Effect Transistors (ISFETs) to be used as a threshold detector during
nucleic acid base pairs match. ISFET-based inverters are used as reaction threshold
detectors to convey the chemical reaction level to a logic output once a threshold has
been reached. Using this method, novel DNA logic functions are derived for
nucleotides allowing local digital computations.
The thesis also presents business models that enable such technology to be utilised in
point of care applications, and experiment as results and business models given for an
HIV point of care example are proposed.