Although the NucliSENS EasyQ platform can obtain measurements simply and rapidly at central laboratories, the system has had limited application outside of this context. With the goal of bedside monitoring, many researchers have reported on integrated analysis systems that make it possible to shift NASBA applications from high-cost, tabletop systems to low-cost, portable devices. Esch et al. developed a NASBA assay in conjunction with fluorescence detection on a microfluidic device [20] . This device consisted of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) block with a single channel, placed on a gold-coated glass slide at the device's center to immobilize the probe. Detection was accomplished using a sandwich hybridization of the NASBA products between capture probes and reporter probes tagged with carboxyfluorescein-filled liposomes. This technique had a detection limit of 5 fmol/L for a sample size of 12.5 μL. A later publication by Dimov et al. reported a microfluidic diagnostic device that integrated solid-phase extraction, real-time fluorescence detection, and a NASBA assay [21] . The integrated microfluidic NASBA chip consisted of two reaction chambers: a silica bead-bed chamber for sample purification and concentration, and a NASBA chamber for RNA amplification. To improve the efficiency of the NASBA reaction, all chambers were incubated with bovine serum albumin overnight before the reaction was started. Adequate amounts of the NASBA product were obtained after a reaction time of 30 min. Earlier this year, Zhao et al. introduced the concept of an integrated microfluidic chip-based system to monitor pathogens in a water environment with femtomolar sensitivity. The system, called immuno-NASBA, combined the versatility of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with the amplification power of NASBA [22] . The device was modeled on a 96-well ELISA microplate with 43 reaction chambers so that it would be fully compatible with a conventional reader. Moreover, the chip contained six parallel reaction channels to perform the simultaneous detection of six targets. Immuno-NASBA diagnostic devices have powerful potential to be applied for the diagnosis of various infectious diseases.