The book “POCT - Patientennahe Labordiagnostik” (Point-of-Care Testing) has finally been released by Springer Heidelberg. (Disclaimer: I contributed to some chapters.) It is already the third edition of this book in Germany but it will be the first to be translated and released worldwide. The book is divided into chapters covering analytical methods, clinical applications, legal and organizational framework conditions, areas of applications, quality control and further development trends. This wide range of topics certainly distinguishes this work. POCT is now beeing employed in diverse fields such as development assistance or sports medicine. It might be surprising that this laboratory medicine book dedicates so much space to quality and organizational issues. However, these topics are of paramount importance when trying to implement POCT in a large medical institution. The book was written by the two editors Prof. Luppa (Leitender Oberarzt - Chief Consultant in my lab) and Prof. Junker with other members of the working group POCT of the German Society of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. Other national and international experts contributed, notably James H. Nichols (Vanderbilt University, USA), Mario Plebani (Padova, Italia) among many others.