diagnostics

In the global health space, there is a lot of talk about silos. It’s quite difficult to get funding for HIV/AIDS and TB or malaria or dengue fever or hepatitis, because the funders typically have money for only one of those diseases. As soon as you try to take a holistic approach to health, you may end up running into this type of challenge.

What if the holistic approach, however, was not about linking different diseases together, but about linking different stages of disease treatment together? There seems to be a small but growing trend of partnerships between diagnostic companies (or those who can diagnose the disease) and pharmaceutical companies (or those who can treat the disease). Below is a list of a few examples of this trend:

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Transitioning Technologies from Labs to LDCs Workshop at Rice University's Institute for Global Health Technologies.

The workshop was an excellent opportunity to learn about some great new health point-of-care diagnostic technologies, point-of-use water purification technologies, and also many of the regulatory hurdles that must be overcome to get products to market, as well as the many groups whose purpose is to support those working toward this goal. Besides the excellent presentations, discussions, and networking opportunities, there was a very impressive poster session highlighting the research and technologies that have been developed by the undergraduate students in Rice University's Beyond Traditional Borders initiative.

If you haven’t heard, today at 4pm EST Ashoka will be hosting its monthly, twitter-based Social Entrepreneurship Chat. This month’s conversation is on mHealth and eHealth challenges and prospects for the future, and comes just one week after the mHealth World Bank Day and the mHealth Summit, sponsored by the Foundation for the National Institute of Health.

If you are not a twitter user, fear not!, a #SocEntChat is a great way to dive into a topic you are interested in and “meet” many people interested in a similar field.
I encourage you to join in the conversation or at least follow along. More details can be found here.

And in case you missed either of the conferences last week, here is a list of some recent post-conference write-ups and takeaways from others:
Learning from mHealth Summit by John Chilmark; World Bank Day @ mHealth Summit – Aftermath by Florian Sturm; Magic and mHealth at TEDMED and mHS09 by Brian Dolan