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The use of biosensors in point-of-care (POC) testing devices has attracted considerable attention in the past few years, mainly because of their high specificity, portability, and relatively low cost. Coupling these devices with miniaturized electrochemical transducers has shown great potential toward simple, rapid, and cost-effective analysis that can be performed in the field, especially for healthcare, environmental monitoring, and food quality control. For this reason, the number of publications in this field has grown exponentially over the past decade, making it a trending topic in current research. Although great improvement has been achieved in the field of electrochemical biosensing, there are still some challenges to overcome, especially concerning the improvement of sensing materials and miniaturization. In this Review, we summarize some of the most recent advances achieved in POC electrochemical biosensor applications, focusing on new materials and modifiers for biorecognition developed to improve sensitivity, specificity, stability, and response time.

Instituto de Qumica, Universidade Federal de Uberlndia, 38700-128 Patos de Minas – MG, Brasil*e-mail: wallanst@yahoo.com.brReceived: January 10, 2012;&Accepted: February 17, 2012AbstractThis work presents a simple, fast and low-cost method for simultaneous determination of acetylsalicylic acid (ASA),without alkaline hydrolysis and caffeine (CF) in pharmaceutical formulations using a boron-doped diamond as theworking electrode through differential pulse voltammetry. A good repeatability was reached for 20 measurements,with a low relative standard deviation of less than 1.0%. The calibration curves presented a great linear correlationcoefficient for both drugs (R=0.999) with a limit of detection of 1.610