About The Conference

The conference took place February 28th through March 1st, 2005 at the Grosvenor Resort in Orlando Florida. The purpose of the HIV Testing: New Development & Challenges conference was to update state and local laboratorians on the status of evolving HIV diagnostic and epidemiologic testing technologies.

These technologies include:

• The development and approval of rapid HIV tests
• Use of multiple rapid HIV tests as a suitable algorithm to diagnose HIV infection
• Nucleic acid testing to screen blood from HIV-antibody negative persons who might be in the process of seroconversion, and
• Assays for recent infection

This conference emulated past Human Retrovirus Testing conferences and focused on:

• New EIAs for HIV recently approved by the FDA
• Rapid HIV testing: Performance, implementation, and proficiency
• Nucleic Acid Amplification Testing for acute HIV infection
• Options for confirmatory testing in various settings
• Dried blood spot testing for confirmation, quality assurance, and incidence
• Discussion sessions:
  • Testing for HIV incidence surveillance
  • Use of rapid HIV tests in international settings

Conference attendees received state-of-the-art updates on HIV diagnostics; described their experience with application and validation of new diagnostic techniques; interacted with partners in the laboratory diagnostic community, research and industry; and identified gaps in diagnostic methods to explore possible solutions.

Who Attended

The Conference was co-sponsored by CDC and APHL. All persons involved with any aspect of HIV diagnostic testing were invited to attend and share their ideas and experiences. Laboratory scientists from private and public health laboratories, research scientists, and representatives from the diagnostics industry involved in research and development were encouraged to attend and to submit abstracts.