Introduction

Abstract

It is accepted that monitoring ions and metabolites continuously provides further understanding of the physiology and pathology of the human body and improves patients’ diagnosis, treatment and length of hospital stay. Although there have been substantial advances over the past decade in terms of miniaturising clinical devices, monitoring chemicals in medical practice still relies on large pieces of equipment. These are generally located in central laboratories that require specialised technicians and offer delayed diagnosis. Typically blood or other body fluids are sampled from patients at regular intervals, disturbing patient recovery and only providing discrete measurements. These not only have a higher probability of associated human error, but fail to reveal any fluctuating pattern occurring between measurements. At most, the physician obtains information of the patient’s physiology every 2 h, at which transient events that might be relevant for the diagnosis are missed.