The environmental footprint of point-of-care diagnostics: quantitative review and a practical eco-design metric

Single-use biosensors such as lateral flow assays (LFAs) have transformed point-of-care (PoC) diagnostics, yet their environmental footprint is rarely considered during design. As deployment scales globally, this oversight raises pressing sustainability concerns. Although early integration of eco-design principles could reduce environmental burdens, biosensor developers lack practical tools to operationalize sustainability during early-stage development. This practical review proposes a quantitative, multi-scale design methodology that bridges materials selection and system-level performance. We compile environmental indicators for materials commonly used in biosensors and conduct a PRISMA-based review of life-cycle assessments, revealing distinct orders of magnitude in carbon footprint across LFAs, instrumented devices, and PCR-based systems. Building on these findings, we introduce the Environmental Cost of Performance (ECoP), a simplified eco-design metric that links analytical sensitivity to environmental impact and reframes conventional performance-driven technology roadmaps into performance-impact trade-off approaches. This practical review is intended to serve as a quantitative toolbox, enabling scientists to integrate eco-design principles into their development practices and to arbitrate between design options using operational environmental metrics. In doing so, it represents a first step beyond generic sustainability claims, paving the way for broader impact assessments that integrate environmental, economic, and societal dimensions into PoC diagnostic innovation.