# Point of Care Technologies for Nutrition, Infection, and Cancer for Global Health (PORTENT)

> **NIH NIH U54** · CORNELL UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $1,310,994

## Abstract

1.0 Overall Abstract
We propose the establishment of PORTENT – “Point-of-Care Technologies for Nutrition, Infection and Cancer
for Global Health” centered at Cornell University in partnership with Columbia and McGill Universities.
The recent Lancet Diagnostic Commission report states that the “diagnostic gap is most severe at the level of primary
health care, in which only about 19% of populations in low-income and lower-middle-income countries have
access to the simplest of diagnostic tests … People who are poor, marginalized, young, or less educated have the
least access to diagnostics.” Developing PoC devices for these populations is challenging. The needs are unique,
the users have disparate qualifications, the path to commercialization is different, the settings have variable
infrastructure, the regulatory agencies have distinctive requirements, and the stakeholders are diverse. The
PORTENT Center is unique as it (1) focuses on primary health care globally; (2) addresses the needs of the
most vulnerable in the US and internationally; and (3) enables a broad range of diagnostic technologies to be
validated on a global scale while simultaneously developing expertise and building capacity internationally
to have the most impact even beyond the center. The center builds on our decades of international experience in
validation, deployment, and commercialization of POC systems and incorporates clinical validation and satellite
technology sites across four continents enabling testing on diverse populations and with a unique set of users.
Our approach is fundamentally enabled by 5 key differentiable elements: (1) A rigorous approach to Needs
Assessment through the establishment of an annual Global PoC Needs Assessment Consensus developed by a
Needs Assessment Advisory Board; (2) The ability to validate PoC technologies on an exceptionally broad range
of established populations and biospecimens in New York City, Ecuador, India, and Uganda; (3) The
establishment of a “Lab-to-Market accelerator for Global Health Point of Care Technologies” to provide
commercialization and tech-to-market support for PORTENT projects; (4) Unique training opportunities and
knowledge transfer workshops for healthcare workers in LMICs on the use of PoC devices and clinical rotations
at our international sites for PoC developers; (5) Access to the team’s network of industrial partners, diagnostics
companies, regulatory experts, venture capital groups, and domestic & international non-governmental
organizations. Illustrative of what we will fund through PORTENT, we describe four “Year 1” projects that (1) enable
early screening of cervical cancer, (2) determination of iron status enabling anemia screening, (3) combined HIV and
multiplexed detection of sexually transmitted diseases, and (4) broader, cheaper, and more accurate malaria testing.
By the end of year 5, PORTENT will: initiate 20 independent PoC technology projects (with 30% from outside
US), engage ~ 15 teams in the...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10928888
- **Project number:** 5U54EB034654-02
- **Recipient organization:** CORNELL UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** David Carl Erickson
- **Activity code:** U54 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $1,310,994
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-09-13 → 2028-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10928888

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10928888, Point of Care Technologies for Nutrition, Infection, and Cancer for Global Health (PORTENT) (5U54EB034654-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-28 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10928888. Licensed CC0.

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