Atam Dhawan, the New Jersey Institute of Technology's vice provost for research, will help lead a federal initiative to map out strategies for better integrating point-of-care technologies (POC) such as heart monitors, cancer-testing kits and rehabilitation devices into the healthcare delivery system.

A recent conference held at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), chaired by Dhawan, brought together policymakers, entrepreneurs, clinicians, academics and insurers to discuss policy and practice around POC devices and technologies in areas such as cardiovascular disease, genetic testing for cancer and age-related neurological disorders.

A panel from the conference composed of all the major stakeholders is working on a white paper spelling out a plan of action for POCs that will be published sometime next year in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine and distributed to all NIH institutes. The paper will discuss ways in which patients, care providers and insurers can collaborate to develop these technologies and to optimize their use. Their efforts are supported by several institutes at NIH.

The recent gathering at NIH, the Strategic Conference on Healthcare Innovations and Point-of-Care (POC) Technologies for Precision Medicine, was co-hosted by the agency and the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Eon Soo Lee, director of NJIT's Advanced Energy Systems and Microdevices Laboratory, presented research on a device that diagnoses ovarian cancer using a micro biosensor chip with no external equipment.