Grand Challenges Canada: Point-of-Care Diagnostics

Grand Challenges in Global Health launched a new grant program to create technologies to assess health conditions and pathogens at the point-of-care in a variety of settings, building on the challenge funded in 2005. $30 million in funding was committed for Phase I of this new diagnostics program. In coordination with this new program, Grand Challenges Canada launched a new point-of-care diagnostics grant opportunity directed primarily at researchers in low- and middle-income countries. $12 million Canadian in funding is available for this initiative. Together these initiatives aim not only to develop and implement new technologies, but also to define standards for point-of-care diagnostics that would enable a single instrument to perform numerous diagnostic tests, thereby reducing cost and complexity within the healthcare system.