• Chemical synthesis, Drug Discovery & Development
• Biomarkers, Circulating Tumor Cells & Single Cell Analysis
• Biofabrication, Bioprinting & Disease Modelling
• Diagnostic Devices and Applications
• Food, Water, Environment Testing using Microfluidics
• Nanofluidics and Analytical Nanotechnolog

Session 02: Droplet-based, Digital, Centrifugal Microfluidics

Droplet-based digital microfluidics is a topic with growing relevance to biological, chemical, and health-science fields. The high precision and excellent reagent economy of such systems are unparalleled. There are, however, fundamental challenges related to actuation and sensing in terms of system scalability, and these challenges are addressed within this chapter. In particular, a new digital microfluidics multiplexer is shown to overcome contemporary on-chip micro drop motion addressability issues and eliminate droplet interference challenges. At the same time, an integrated folded-cavity optical sensor provides highly localized and sensitive probing of internal fluid refractive indices. The complete system offers improved micro drop motion and sensing capabilities for future lab-on-a-chip technologies.

 

Session 03: Point-of-care &  Biosensors

Point-of-care testing (POCT) is essential for the rapid detection of analytes near to the patient, which facilitates better disease diagnosis, monitoring, and management. Recent years have witnessed tremendous advances in point-of-care diagnostics (POCD), which are a result of continuous developments in biosensors, microfluidic, bioanalytical platforms, assay formats, lab-on-a-chip technologies, and complementary technologies. This special issue targets the critical advances in POCD and provides guided insights and directions for future research.  It enables quick medical decisions, as the diseases can be diagnosed at a very early stage, leading to improved health outcomes for patients by enabling the early start of treatment. The global POCT market is expected to grow from US$ 23.16 in 2016 to US$ 36.96 billion in 2021 at the compound annual growth rate of 9.8% from 2016 to 2021.

 

Session 04: Wearables & Mobile Diagnostics

Wearable devices are currently at the heart of just about every discussion related to the Internet of Things. The requirement for self-health monitoring and preventive medicine is increasing due to the projected dramatic increase in the number of elderly people until 2020. Developed technologies are truly able to reduce the overall costs for prevention and monitoring. This is possible by constantly monitoring health indicators in various areas, and in particular, wearable devices are considered to carry this task out. These wearable devices and mobile apps now have been integrated with telemedicine and telehealth efficiently, to structure the medical Internet of Things. This paper reviews wearable health care devices both in scientific papers and commercial efforts.

 

Session 05: Micro-chemistry & Micro-systems

Micro-total analysis systems, or the so-called "Lab-on-a-chip", have attracted increasing attention because of their ability to integrate multiple biochemical processes at pL/nL-scale in a single device using microfabrication technology. The advantages of miniaturising and integrating genetic analysis include high speed, less reagent consumption, and a reduction in size of instruments. The development of microsystems or "Lab-on-a-Chip" for both biological and chemical applications is a fast growing field due to the ability of these devices to perform a complex set of successive operations at a scale not easily handled by human experimenter. If few of these systems have reached the market nowadays, there are many public and industrial researchers working together on worldwide research programs. In this paper we first present the two microsystem archetypes, the microarrays and the microfluidic systems and some of their applications in chemistry and biology (chemical microarrays, chemical microreactors, DNA chips, microseparation).

 

Session 06: Nano-channel, Micro-channel and Mini-channel

Micro-channels are characterized as stream sections that have pressure driven measurements in the scope of 10 to 200 micrometers. Methods/Statistical Analysis: It is assumed that the present work would provide new direction to the researcher in the field of micro channel heat sink. Findings: Subsequent to looking into the progression in warmth exchange innovation from a verifiable point of view, the benefits of utilizing micro channels as a part of high warmth flux cooling applications is examined and research done on different parts of micro channel heat exchanger execution is assessed. Application/Improvements: The present condition of manufacture innovation is looked into, taxonomically sorted out and found to offer numerous new potential outcomes for building micro-channels.

Session 07: Bio-fabrication & Bio-manufacturing

Bioprinting with the 3D-bioplotter allows medical researchers to combine cells, gels, fibers, polymers, ceramics, metals and more into a single scaffolded object that can replace a diseased, injured or missing body part, from tissue and bone to organs.

In fact, biofabrication research is being done in a wide range of areas:

With biofabrication, a platform must be trusted to accurately place cells and mix materials in a sterile, temperature-controlled environment, as the 3D-Bioplotter has been doing for more than a decade. It also should be easy for researchers to use and manipulate for their various research needs.

 

Session 08: Optofluidics, Plasmonic and Bioimaging devices

Bio-imaging generally indicates imaging techniques that acquire biological information from living forms. Recently, the ability to detect, diagnose, and monitor pathological, physiological, and molecular dynamics is in great demand, while scaling down the observing angle, achieving precise alignment, fast actuation, and a miniaturized platform become key elements in next-generation optical imaging systems. Optofluidics, nominally merging optic and microfluidic technologies, is a relatively new research field, and it has drawn great attention since the last decade. Given its abilities to manipulate both optic and fluidic functions/elements in the micro/nanometer regime, optofluidics shows great potential in bio-imaging to elevate our cognition in the subcellular and/or molecular level.

 

Session 09: Acoustic Droplet Ejection

Acoustic bead discharge utilizes a beat of ultrasound to move low volumes of liquids (ordinarily nanolitres or picolitres) with no physical contact. This innovation centres acoustic vitality into a liquid example with a specific end goal to discharge beads as little as a millionth of a millionth of a litter. ADE innovation is an exceptionally delicate process, and it can be utilized to exchange proteins, high sub-atomic weight DNA and live cells without harm or loss of feasibility. This element makes the innovation reasonable for a wide assortment of uses including proteomics and based examines.

 

Session 10: Tissues-on-a-chips and 3D Cell Culture Systems

Lab on a chip and microfluidics are important technologies with numerous applications from drug delivery to tissue engineering. LOC integrates fluidic and electronic components on a single chip and becomes very attractive due to the possibility of their state of art implementation in personalized devices for the point of care treatments. The implementation of microfluidic devices within life sciences has furthered the possibilities of both academic and industrial applications such as rapid genome sequencing, predictive drug studies, and single cell manipulation. In contrast to the preferred two dimensional cell based screening, three dimensional (3D) systems have more in vivo relevance as well as ability to perform as a predictive tool for the success or failure of a drug screening campaign.

 

Session 11: Point-of-care Diagnostics & Global Health

Biomedical engineers have traditionally developed technologies in response to the needs of the developed world's medical community. As a result, the diagnostic systems on which they have worked have met the requirements of well-funded laboratories in highly regulated and quality-assessed environments. However, such approaches do not address the needs of the majority of the world's people afflicted with infectious diseases, who have, at best, access to poorly resourced health care facilities with almost no supporting clinical laboratory infrastructure. A major challenge for the biomedical engineering community is to develop diagnostic tests to meet the needs of these people, the majority of whom are in the developing world. We here review the context in which the diagnostics must operate, some of the appropriate diagnostic technologies already in distribution, and some emerging technologies that promise to address this challenge. However, there is much room for innovation, adaptation, and cost reduction before these technologies can impact health care in the developing world.

 

Session 12: Microfluidics Simulation

Simulations of microfluidic devices are carried out for instance in the process of design of new apparatus for drug delivery. Whatever case, fluid flow simulation is only a part of the larger development process. After carrying out flow investigation, one can investigate for instance transport and diffusion of chemical species in such a device. The microfluidics Module brings you easily-operated tools for studying microfluidic devices. Important applications include simulations of lab-on-a-chip devices, digital microfluidics, electrokinetic and magnetokinetic devices, and inkjets. The microfluidics Module includes ready-to-use user interfaces and simulation tools, so called physics interfaces, for single-phase flow, porous media flow, two-phase flow, and transport phenomena.