Systems Engineering and Point of Care Testing: Report from the NIBIB POCT/Systems Engineering Workshop.

The first part of this manuscript is an introduction to systems engineering and how it may be applied to health care and point of care testing (POCT). Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to better understand and manage changes in complex systems and projects as whole. Systems are sets of interconnected elements which interact with each other, are dynamic, change over time and are subject to complex behaviors.