Background: A number of point-of-care diagnostic tests are commercially available in the UK, however, not much is known regarding GPs' desire for these tests or the clinical areas of interest.
Objective: We sought to establish for which conditions point-of-care tests (POCTs) would be most helpful to UK GPs for diagnosis, reduction of referrals, and monitoring of chronic conditions.
Methods: A total of 1635 regionally representative GPs were invited to complete an online cross-sectional survey between 31 September and 16 October 2012.
Results: A total of 1109 (68%) GPs responded to the survey. The most frequently cited conditions were urinary tract infections for diagnosis (47% of respondents), pulmonary embolism/deep vein thrombosis for referral reduction (47%) and international normalized ratio/anticoagulation for monitoring (49%).
Conclusions: This survey has identified the conditions for which UK GPs would find POCTs most helpful. Comments by respondents suggest that quite radical system-level adjustments will be required to allow primary care clinicians to capitalize on the potential benefits of POCTs.
Keywords: Cross-sectional studies; diagnostic tests; general practitioners; point-of-care; primary health care; surveys and questionnaires..
© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press.