For Dr Michael Osborn, President of RCPath, the potential disadvantage with POCT’s rapid expansion is that people lose sight of the reason for doing it in the first place. “We are very positive about POCT. But there must be a good reason to do it. That may be because it improves patient care directly or improves the service by making it more cost effective or by engaging hard-to-reach patients. There are lots of good reasons to do it, but nobody should be doing POCT simply because they can. With a lot of interest and investment from various companies, the danger is that we have POCT that adds little to service provision. We want to make sure that it is done well and done for the benefit of patients.”