Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going: Surface-enhanced Raman Spectroscopy-based Biosensing for Human Health Monitoring

Human health and performance monitoring is a field that is rapidly evolving through the development of point of care, wearable, and electrochemical sensors. While conventional medicine relies on physical exams, patients’ response to questions, blood tests, and imaging, recent evidence demonstrates that real-time detection of molecules correlated with changes in physiological conditions provides greater insight to human health on a personalized level. Both non-invasive and minimally invasive sensors have been developed, including smart watches and fitness devices, that can monitor human health conditions through the skin, and in non-invasively collected biofluids such as urine, saliva, tear fluid, and sweat. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has shown great promise in the field of human health monitoring through detection of biomarkers in cells, tissue, and biofluids. SERS allows for detection that is rapid, label-free, selective, and involves little to no sample preparation. Major breakthroughs over the last (almost) 20 years and future directions for SERS-based biosensing will be discussed.