Conman, good to question the basic premise, sometimes one can get carried away with excitement over progress and forget the real-world conditions of the emergency room. However consider this - there has been a great deal of money and effort spent by numerous coys over many years on developing a hand-held POC device, and for all the effort, there has been no tech so far which matched lab results reliably enough, with a broad range of analytes that are clinically relevant. The exceptions would be blood glucose monitors and recently INR machines. I highly recommend Riverbrae's (I think it was) link to the history of this endeavour - check his posts to find it.
Now, there is currently a push by governments to reduce hospital waiting times, and this includes emergency room waiting times. So you will have seen the current ads entreating people to NOT present at A&E if the problem is NOT an accident or an emergency. Good luck with that, I say.
Doctors are being measured by administrators by throughput, so the theory goes that by setting a "seen within 15min" standard in a govt minister's office for good PR, the overworked and stressed medical team will be able to meet that artificial standard - hey presto!
So triage/rapid diagnosis is becoming more and more relevant, for both clinical and logistical reasons. By the way ICU could be another site for optimal use of POCDs so don't think just in terms of ED.
Does the medical community want such a device? You can bet on it. And we are within 6-12months of having one.
