Global Health Challenges at the Point of Care: A Review of Tuberculosis Needs Assessment

Tuberculosis is one of the deadliest communicable diseases in the world, and consequently remains one of the biggest global healthcare challenges. Tuberculosis is treatable and curable. However, within many low resource settings, underdeveloped medical infrastructure limits the effectiveness and acc...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Tounkel, Inna
Format: Others
Published: Scholarship @ Claremont 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/578
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1532&context=scripps_theses
id ndltd-CLAREMONT-oai-scholarship.claremont.edu-scripps_theses-1532
record_format oai_dc
spelling ndltd-CLAREMONT-oai-scholarship.claremont.edu-scripps_theses-15322015-05-19T03:35:06Z Global Health Challenges at the Point of Care: A Review of Tuberculosis Needs Assessment Tounkel, Inna Tuberculosis is one of the deadliest communicable diseases in the world, and consequently remains one of the biggest global healthcare challenges. Tuberculosis is treatable and curable. However, within many low resource settings, underdeveloped medical infrastructure limits the effectiveness and accuracy of existing diagnostics. These limitations severely impede the timely diagnosis of the disease, and thus contribute to the disease spreading, developing drug resistance, and killing more individuals. There is an urgent need for an inexpensive, portable, rapid, easy-to-use point of care diagnostic that can function outside of the laboratory at the community level. Currently, there is a wide range of available tuberculosis diagnostics ranging from sputum smear microscopy to nucleic acid amplification tests. Yet, none have met every standard of the ideal point of care diagnostic. Since the World Health Organization’s endorsement of Xpert MTB/RIF in 2010, there has been a resurgence of interest in point of care diagnostic development. This investigation reviewed diagnostic development projects funded by the National Institutes of Health in 2008 and 2014 in order to examine the technologies being developed, how researchers in industrial and academic sectors are addressing this problem, and what challenges still need to be overcome. More projects in 2014 were expected to rely on sample types other than sputum and be funded than those in 2008. The results of this investigation confirm this hypothesis, and that the development of a point of care device is a multi-faceted challenge with numerous underlying issues that need to be addressed before such a device can be successfully implemented. 2015-01-01T08:00:00Z text application/pdf http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/578 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1532&context=scripps_theses © 2014 Inna Tounkel default Scripps Senior Theses Scholarship @ Claremont point of care tuberculosis needs assessment diagnostics global health Community Health and Preventive Medicine Medicine and Health Sciences Public Health
collection NDLTD
format Others
sources NDLTD
topic point of care
tuberculosis
needs assessment
diagnostics
global health
Community Health and Preventive Medicine
Medicine and Health Sciences
Public Health
spellingShingle point of care
tuberculosis
needs assessment
diagnostics
global health
Community Health and Preventive Medicine
Medicine and Health Sciences
Public Health
Tounkel, Inna
Global Health Challenges at the Point of Care: A Review of Tuberculosis Needs Assessment
description Tuberculosis is one of the deadliest communicable diseases in the world, and consequently remains one of the biggest global healthcare challenges. Tuberculosis is treatable and curable. However, within many low resource settings, underdeveloped medical infrastructure limits the effectiveness and accuracy of existing diagnostics. These limitations severely impede the timely diagnosis of the disease, and thus contribute to the disease spreading, developing drug resistance, and killing more individuals. There is an urgent need for an inexpensive, portable, rapid, easy-to-use point of care diagnostic that can function outside of the laboratory at the community level. Currently, there is a wide range of available tuberculosis diagnostics ranging from sputum smear microscopy to nucleic acid amplification tests. Yet, none have met every standard of the ideal point of care diagnostic. Since the World Health Organization’s endorsement of Xpert MTB/RIF in 2010, there has been a resurgence of interest in point of care diagnostic development. This investigation reviewed diagnostic development projects funded by the National Institutes of Health in 2008 and 2014 in order to examine the technologies being developed, how researchers in industrial and academic sectors are addressing this problem, and what challenges still need to be overcome. More projects in 2014 were expected to rely on sample types other than sputum and be funded than those in 2008. The results of this investigation confirm this hypothesis, and that the development of a point of care device is a multi-faceted challenge with numerous underlying issues that need to be addressed before such a device can be successfully implemented.
author Tounkel, Inna
author_facet Tounkel, Inna
author_sort Tounkel, Inna
title Global Health Challenges at the Point of Care: A Review of Tuberculosis Needs Assessment
title_short Global Health Challenges at the Point of Care: A Review of Tuberculosis Needs Assessment
title_full Global Health Challenges at the Point of Care: A Review of Tuberculosis Needs Assessment
title_fullStr Global Health Challenges at the Point of Care: A Review of Tuberculosis Needs Assessment
title_full_unstemmed Global Health Challenges at the Point of Care: A Review of Tuberculosis Needs Assessment
title_sort global health challenges at the point of care: a review of tuberculosis needs assessment
publisher Scholarship @ Claremont
publishDate 2015
url http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/578
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1532&context=scripps_theses
work_keys_str_mv AT tounkelinna globalhealthchallengesatthepointofcareareviewoftuberculosisneedsassessment
_version_ 1716803514243481600