Viral respiratory tract infection is a serious threat to human health, causing significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. Many viral respiratory tract infections exhibit similar clinical symptoms, so the rapid detection and identification of pathogens is of great significance to the rational use of drugs, disease diagnosis and treatment, as well as reducing of patients pressure and social economy. Compared with routine clinical laboratory testing, point-of-care testing(POCT) is more conducive to identifying pathogens rapidly, improving detection rate of respiratory viruses, reducing unnecessary use of antimicrobial agents, and using antiviral agents rationally. This paper mainly describes the current situation of viral respiratory tract infection, clinical application of POCT and detection methods of viral respiratory tract infection, focusing on the advantages and potentiality of real-time detection of emerging FilmArray respiratory tract molecules in pathogen identification.