A facile and real-time spectroscopic method for biofluid analysis in point-of-care diagnostics

Background: Accurate and real-time information is critical for decision making, especially in medical applications, where any delay in diagnosis due to collection, transport and storage of biofluids can have substantial ramifications for disease management. Results: We present a facile method for point-of-care biofluid diagnostics based on the spectroscopic analysis of cotton-swab contents using a Raman probe. A PCA algorithm was developed in order to understand the clustering behavior of different off-the-shelf pharmaceutical formulations based on the recorded spectral data. Furthermore, we employed the Raman probe to detect antibiotics in a human urine sample. Our observations suggest that it is possible...