In an analogy with silicon-based electronics, novel sensing and biosensing technologies must keep pace with the demands of increased sophistication, greater functionality, improved performance, and greater intelligence while still being low cost and amenable to mass manufacture. Several technologies are coming together to facilitate these demands such as organic polymers, nanomaterials and novel print production methodologies. Our work has focussed on the convergence of ‘top down’ production processing with ‘bottom up’ materials fabrication to try and achieve improved device performance, while being amenable to mass production and low cost. From the ‘bottom up’ perspective, we have concentrated on the application of conducting organic polymers (principally polyaniline) as electroactive materials. We have improved the materials properties through the development of nanoparticulate formulations which exhibit increased material performance and homogeneity, while also being amenable to solution processing. From a ‘top down’ perspective, we have employed ink jet printing as a tool for rapid, controllable, low volume materials deposition which can transfer readily from the laboratory to mass production. We have shown that the ink jet printed deposition of conducting polymer nanoparticles leads to excellent film formation, homogeneity and uniformity. This has the knock on effect of improving analytical characteristics of sensitivity and reproducibility. We have developed a range of sensor applications using printed nanostructured conducting polymers including industrial monitoring (ammonia in secondary refrigerant systems) and clinical diagnostics (ammonia in human breath at ppb concentrations). We are further combining these and other materials to fabricate fully inkjet printable biosensors for analytes such as creatinine, urea, glucose and cholesterol. Finally, we will demonstrate how we are bringing biosensors together with other print-based technologies such as organic electronics, printed batteries and displays into fully integrated and intelligent biosensor systems.