The Working Group on New Diagnostics (WGND) was established in 2001 as a platform for focus on promoting development and adoption of new and modified diagnostic products. Since then, the WGND secretariat (UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR)) and the Chairs, Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) and an elected representative, along with all the members of the WGND including international organizations, academia, NGOs and industry have contributed significantly to the advances in the field of TB diagnostics. Promising technologies have been screened and a series of new product developments initiated, supported, and/or subjected to field trials. Concurrently tools (such as the WHO/TDR TB specimen and strain banks) were developed to better assist researchers and enable such developments as well as to assist in validating their potential future public health impact (mathematical modeling).
Because of the enormous increase in the range, speed and intensity of diagnostic development for TB, the WGNDs diagnostics pipeline is the largest it has ever been.
This has made it a priority for the WGND to develop a scientific blueprint for the development of TB diagnostics that will clearly lay out the development and evaluation stages in the value chain of new diagnostics, leading to global implementation. Additionally it is a priority to develop criteria to place developing diagnostic technologies within this value chain and describe an expanded diagnostic pipeline that reflects the increase in diagnostic development for TB.
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