Lab on a chip technology has reached a staggering level of maturity, with a multitude of ingenious devices and
individual components allowing for a variety of complex chemical and biological assays to be performed in a single
device, rapidly and with matching sensitivity to their traditional lab based counterparts. In the pursuit of engineering
excellence in areas such as added device functionality, increased endpoint detection sensitivities and lower resolution
manufacturing processes from the micro to the nanoscale, many academic researchers are found guilty of leaving the
challenge of technology transfer into a commercially viable product as an afterthought over being a critical
consideration of the overall engineering process chain. It is therefore believed that researchers in the lab-on-a-chip
community need to focus less on further demonstrations of advanced functionality, but more on the challenge of
integration, standardization, economy of scale for mass market appeal and, perhaps more importantly, the added value
to the application the device is aimed towards.