Core 5. Administration of the Center Leadership Vision, Center Theme, and Public Health. Dr. Kost (PI) with US and Thai research teams reported field survey results from Hurricane Katrina and the 2005 tsunami in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology in October 2006 (Kost 2006E). In December 2006 his education brief on POCT and disaster preparedness appeared in Medical Laboratory Observer (Kost 2006F). Observation and awareness of the problems encountered by physicians, nurses, and rescuers inspired the Center theme of critical-emergencv-disaster care. Basically, without suitable or adequate POC and critical care testing devices, health care workers in these world disasters were forced to practice empirical, rather than evidence-based medicine. The POC Technologies Research Network can help correct this situation! Environmental stress testing of POCT began months ago at the POCT'CTR. Results show that POCT reagents will not withstand temperature extremes and other hardships encountered during disaster rescues (see Core 2, """"""""Research Progress Report""""""""). Stephanie Sumner, POCT-CTR researcher, submitted an abstract (Sumner 2007), """"""""Environmental Limits of POCT: Relevance to Disaster Readiness"""""""" (see Appendix), to the national meeting of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) to be held in San Diego in July 2007. Dr. Kost will moderate and speak in the AACC Symposium, """"""""Diagnostic Health Care Strategies for Critical Care and Disaster Readiness?Preparing Point-of-Care and Critical Care Testing: The Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, Earthquakes, and DMATs."""""""" His nominee, Dr. Julie Geberding, Head of the CDC, accepted an invitation to speak in the Plenary session prior to his Symposium. These """"""""head start"""""""" initiatives and the clinical research on multiplexed pathogen detection described in Core 1 support our Center theme of critical-emergency-disaster care. Early work also has launched the concept of environmental standards for POC devices used in public health. While POCT has evolved to be smaller, smarter, faster, and cheaper, it is not yet robust or connected in rural, emergency, and disaster settings (Kost 2006E and 2006J) and wholeblood multiplexed pathogen detection lags advances in other areas, such as rapid indexed interpretation of multiple cardiac biomarker POCT in acute coronary syndrome for US chest pain centers (Kost 2005B). The mission of our Center, therefore, is to develop fully field-capable POCT, including pathogen detection, with diagnostic results properly interpreted, integrated, and synthesized for rapid medical diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment. Our administrative plan will allow us to achieve these goals
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