Programmable Manually Powered Microfluidics for Rapid Point-of-Care Diagnosis of Urinary Tract Infection

Point-of-care testing (POCT) for urinary tract infection (UTI) holds significant importance in the field of disease prevention and control, as well as the advancement of personalized precision medicine. However, conventional methods for detecting UTIs continue to face challenges such as time-consuming and labor-intensive detection processes, and reliance on specialized equipment and personnel rendering them unsuitable for point-of-care applications, especially in resource-limited areas. Here, we propose a novel flexible programmable manually powered microfluidic (FPM) for rapid point-of-care diagnosis of UTIs. For the first time, the proposed FPMs was achieved through a combined strategy of laser printing, cutting, and laminating, with the entire process completed in under 15 min at a cost of less than $0.5, which effectively circumvent the traditionally time-consuming and labor-intensive soft lithography techniques. By incorporating a modular structure-based design concept, we successfully developed various types of portable FPMs with functionalities including parallel pumping, simultaneous releasing, quantitative dispensing, sequential releasing, cyclic motion of multiple liquids and concentration gradient generating. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, we initially employed a high-throughput parallel dispensing design to analyze six urinary biochemical markers within 1 min, presenting potential applicability for future at-home testing. We then integrated a manually powered concentration gradient generator with spatial confinement signal enhancement to enable rapid phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) within three to 5 h, while achieving clinical diagnostic accuracy rates of up to 95.56%. Therefore, our proposed FPMs eliminate the need for external pumps or actuators and could serve as an affordable hand-held POCT tool for UTI diagnosis. Moreover, in resource-poor areas, they have potential utility as robust POCT devices addressing diverse rapid detection needs.