Paul Drain,
Instructor of Medicine,
Harvard Medical School
Paul Drain, MD, MPH, is an infectious disease physician and clinical researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on use of diagnostic testing and clinic-based screening, including novel point-of-care technologies, to improve clinical care and patient-centered outcomes in resource-limited settings. His research is supported by the NIH, Harvard Global Health Institute, Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and AIDS Healthcare Foundation. He has authored two global health books and received awards from the Global Health Education Consortium, the Infectious Disease Society of America, and a Faculty Teaching Award from Harvard Medical School, where he co-teaches “Introduction to Social Medicine and Global Health” to first-year medical students.
Creating Point-of-Care Diagnostics for Use in Resource-Limited Settings: Lessons Learned from South Africa
Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 15:30
Add to Calendar ▼2015-09-29 15:30:002015-09-29 16:30:00Europe/LondonCreating Point-of-Care Diagnostics for Use in Resource-Limited Settings: Lessons Learned from South AfricaPoint-of-Care Diagnostics and Global Health World Congress in San Diego, California, USASan Diego, California, USASELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
Point-of-care diagnostics have improved dramatically in accuracy, rapidity, accessibility, and cost during the last several decades. While rapid diagnostic tests for HIV have been widely adopted worldwide, newer molecular tests for tuberculosis are facing operational challenges and programmatic resistance. The Xpert MTB/RIF assay–a rapid molecular diagnostic test for tuberculosis–was endorsed by the World Health Organization in 2010. By June 2014, 3,269 GeneXpert instruments and over 7.5 million Xpert MTB/RIF tests had been procured in developing countries. South Africa has a very high burden of tuberculosis, and started implementing the Xpert MTB/RIF assay throughout national laboratories in 2011. Although the test has been called a “game changer,” nearly every study in South Africa has shown that Xpert MTB/RIF has not had a significant clinical impact or been cost-effective. I will present our study data demonstrating that centralized use of Xpert MTB/RIF was slower than conventional tuberculosis tests (e.g. culture and smear microscopy), and summarize additional studies on the application and clinical impact of the test’s rollout in South Africa. By reviewing the experience of South Africa’s real-world experiment in introducing a rapid molecular diagnostic test, I will highlight the critical lessons learned for the future design and implementation of advanced diagnostics for infectious diseases. I will present our revised criteria for an ideal diagnostic point-of-care test, which were recently published in The Lancet. Finally, I will summarize the appropriate clinical evaluations of these tests and conclude with common benchmark criteria that novel point-of-care diagnostics should achieve in order to gain widespread global use.
Add to Calendar ▼2015-09-28 00:00:002015-09-30 00:00:00Europe/LondonPoint-of-Care Diagnostics and Global Health World CongressPoint-of-Care Diagnostics and Global Health World Congress in San Diego, California, USASan Diego, California, USASELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
Add to Calendar ▼2015-09-29 15:30:002015-09-29 16:30:00Europe/LondonCreating Point-of-Care Diagnostics for Use in Resource-Limited Settings: Lessons Learned from South AfricaPoint-of-Care Diagnostics and Global Health World Congress in San Diego, California, USASan Diego, California, USASELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
