The dramatic progress in the analysis of human, animal and plant genomes as well as parallel developments such as the human cancer gene anatomy project have created an enormous demand for low-cost high throughput technologies for DNA and RNA analysis. Chip-based molecular techniques — if available in satisfactory quality for diagnostic applications — will enable major analytical issues in health care such as predisposition, cancer, infectious diseases and others to be addressed.

DNA micro-arrays have been predicted to become a key technology in molecular analysis for nearly one decade now. Although their proportion in the research market (e.g. expression profiling) has increased significantly they still play a minor role in clinical and medical diagnostic fields. Main drawbacks for the implementation of BioChips in clinical routine analysis are insufficient reproducibility, lack of standardization as well as expensive chips and detectors. With respect to BioChip production, industrial standards and uniform protocols have not yet been defined. Therefore different BioChip layouts and analytical performance cannot be compared.