Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) affects 100,000 Americans and more than 14 million people globally, mostly in economically disadvantaged populations, and requires early diagnosis after birth and constant monitoring throughout the life-span of the patient. Areas covered: Early diagnosis of SCD still remains a challenge in preventing childhood mortality in the developing world due to requirements of skilled personnel and high-cost of currently available modalities. On the other hand, SCD monitoring presents insurmountable challenges due to heterogeneities among patient populations, as well as in the same individual longitudinally. Here, we describe emerging point-of-care micro/nano platform technologies for SCD screening and monitoring, and critically discuss current state of the art, potential challenges associated with these technologies, and future directions. Expert commentary: Recently developed microtechnologies offer simple, rapid, and affordable screening of SCD and have the potential to facilitate universal screening in resource-limited settings and developing countries. On the other hand, monitoring of SCD is more complicated compared to diagnosis and requires comprehensive validation of efficacy. Early use of novel microdevices for patient monitoring might come in especially handy in new clinical trial designs of emerging therapies.

Declaration of Interest Y. Alapan, U. Gurkan, J. Little and R. Ung have a financial interest in Hemex Health (licensor of the HemeChip Technology) including licensed intellectual property, stock ownership, and consulting. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

• R01 HL133574/HL/NHLBI NIH HHS/United States
• UL1 TR000439/TR/NCATS NIH HHS/United States