Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) affect an estimated 1 billion people in 149 countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) prioritised 17 NTDs for control and elimination by 2020 and defined a Road Map to help countries reach these goals. Improved diagnostics for NTDs are essential for guiding treatment strategies at different thresholds of control, interruption of transmission, elimination and post-elimination surveillance. While substantial progress has been made in the last decade with chemotherapy, the same cannot be said of diagnostics, largely due to the perceived lack of a commercially viable market for NTD diagnostics. New sample in-answer out nucleic acid amplification technologies that can be performed at the point-of-care offer improved performance over current technologies and the potential to test for multiple pathogens using a single specimen. Finding commonalities for different NTDs in terms of geographic overlap, sentinel populations and treatment strategy will allow NTD programs to leverage these innovations to build cost-effective multiplex surveillance platforms. Connectivity solutions linking data from diagnostic laboratories and POC test readers/devices provide opportunities for automated surveillance systems to make health systems more efficient, improving patient outcomes and assessing impact of interventions in real time. New models of public-private product development partnerships are critical in leveraging diagnostic innovation in other priority area for better diagnosis, control and elimination of NTDs.
BT - Computational and structural biotechnology journal C1 -http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28352456?dopt=Abstract
DO - 10.1016/j.csbj.2017.02.003 J2 - Comput Struct Biotechnol J LA - eng N2 -Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) affect an estimated 1 billion people in 149 countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) prioritised 17 NTDs for control and elimination by 2020 and defined a Road Map to help countries reach these goals. Improved diagnostics for NTDs are essential for guiding treatment strategies at different thresholds of control, interruption of transmission, elimination and post-elimination surveillance. While substantial progress has been made in the last decade with chemotherapy, the same cannot be said of diagnostics, largely due to the perceived lack of a commercially viable market for NTD diagnostics. New sample in-answer out nucleic acid amplification technologies that can be performed at the point-of-care offer improved performance over current technologies and the potential to test for multiple pathogens using a single specimen. Finding commonalities for different NTDs in terms of geographic overlap, sentinel populations and treatment strategy will allow NTD programs to leverage these innovations to build cost-effective multiplex surveillance platforms. Connectivity solutions linking data from diagnostic laboratories and POC test readers/devices provide opportunities for automated surveillance systems to make health systems more efficient, improving patient outcomes and assessing impact of interventions in real time. New models of public-private product development partnerships are critical in leveraging diagnostic innovation in other priority area for better diagnosis, control and elimination of NTDs.
PY - 2017 SP - 271 EP - 274 T2 - Computational and structural biotechnology journal TI - Re-imagining the future of diagnosis of Neglected Tropical Diseases. UR - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5358522/pdf/main.pdf VL - 15 ER -