Senior Vice Provost for Research Chosen to Chair NIH Research Network Board

Atam Dhawan, senior vice provost for research at NJIT, has recently been selected to chair the Independent Expert Board (IEB) of the Point-of-Care Technologies Research Network (POCTRN).

POCTRN was created in 2007 to drive the development of appropriate point-of-care diagnostic technologies though collaborative efforts that simultaneously merge scientific and technological capabilities with clinical need.

The IEB is charged with providing the POCTRN leadership with strategic oversight of the network and recommendations for accelerating commercial translation and clinical impact. It will perform an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the POCTRN, as well as identify opportunities across the network.

A major aspect of the function of each network center is the creation of multidisciplinary partnerships necessary to move technologies from an early stage of development into clinical testing. Additionally, the network provides parallel educational activities that advance evidence-based medical practice in point-of-care testing in primary outreach, and in low-resource environments, including global health settings.

Meeting annually, the board has broad representation of leaders and stakeholders of the point-of-care technologies community, such as providers, payers, investors, industry representatives, FDA, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, U.S. patent office and National Institute of Health (NIH) leadership. The board will report its recommendations arising from annual meetings to the NIH.