Advanced technologies for industry - Product watch. Nano-enabled microsystems for bio analysis

Lab-on-a-Chip-based technology for bio-chemical analysis represents a complex high potential technology for a wide application field. It holds the potential to revolutionise the diagnostics and biomedical research practice contributing not only to cost efficiency and performance improvement but creating advanced opportunities that lead to better healthcare. Beyond the bio-medical area, a number of further different application areas can benefit from the deployment of this technology. Despite its huge potential and a number of successful proof-of-concepts of LOC-based devices, only a small portion of them can be successfully commercialised and eventually enter the market. There are still a lot of barriers that need to be overcome for a successful uptake and diffusion of the technology. The report aims to provide an overview of relevant stakeholders, map the value chain structure and to briefly describe the stakeholders' interactions in the value chain. The further objective is to identify strengths, opportunities, challenges and weaknesses that characterise the European microfluidics and particularly the LOC related ecosystem and to show how the EU is positioned in terms of the global competition. Analyses were based on desk-research and on the internal expertise of Fraunhofer ISI in the subject as well as on insights gained from the expert interviews.