ATLANTA (May 28, 2020) – Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the Emory University School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics and the Georgia Institute of Technology have received a $31 million supplement from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest supplement awarded to any participant in the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) program. RADx is a federal initiative designed to rapidly transform early, innovative technologies into widely accessible COVID-19 diagnostic testing.

In April, it was announced that Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the Emory University School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics and the Georgia Institute of Technology were selected to lead the national effort in testing validation through the Atlanta Center for Microsystems Engineered Point-of-Care Technologies (ACME POCT).

As one of only five NIH-funded point-of-care technology centers in the nation within the Point-of-Care Technologies Research Network (POCTRN), ACME POCT will use the $31 million supplement to lead testing validation and work closely with partners across the country – including relevant technology developers and others in the medical diagnostics industry – to meet a short deadline. The goal of the project is to make millions of accurate and easy-to-use [COVID-19] tests per week available by the end of summer 2020 and in time for flu season.

“We will vet and whittle down thousands of COVID-19 diagnostic tests the NIH will receive from across the country to 10 to 20 meritorious projects, which our Center will shepherd toward manufacturing and scale up with the objective of national deployment this fall,” says Wilbur Lam, MD, PhD, Pediatric Hematologist and Oncologist at Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children’s, principal investigator of ACME POCT, and faculty member of the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) is urging all scientists and inventors with a rapid testing technology to compete in the national COVID-19 testing challenge for a share of up to $500 million over all different phases of development that will assist the public’s safe return to normal activities. The technologies will be put through a highly competitive, rapid three-phase selection process to identify the best candidates for at-home or point-of-care tests for COVID-19.

Read the full release here