Special Topic Conference: The special topic conference, which is co-sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will focus on healthcare innovations and point-of-care technologies and their clinical translation to address challenges in global quality healthcare. The proposed conference will provide an international forum with clinicians, healthcare providers, industry experts, innovators, researchers and students to define clinical needs and technology solutions towards commercialization and translation to clinical applications across different environments and infrastructures. Panel discussions and open forum sessions along with research presentations will focus on the development, clinical translational, commercialization, implementation and user-compliance of innovative healthcare and point-of-care technologies in clinical (hospital, emergency, acute, chronic and primary care), non-traditional (consumer) and under-resourced settings.

The conference will provide a forum for all stakeholders in healthcare to elucidate the barriers and challenges in the broad delivery of quality, accurate, and affordable health care. Features include discussions on the role of point-of-care diagnostic systems in quality global healthcare from the perspectives of all stakeholders, especially in underserved and under-resourced populations; and barriers and challenges to adoption and mechanisms by which innovative technologies can be collectively addressed and overcome by collaboration across all stakeholders for quality global healthcare. Through panel discussions and breakout sessions, the conference will also provide opportunities for stakeholders to explore collaborations and synergies to accelerate healthcare system development, validation, deployment and adoption in a manner consistent with the needs of the stakeholder groups, and to achieve the overall goal of improving healthcare at affordable cost.