FIND appoints new Chief Medical Officer

Geneva, Switzerland – 10 October 2015 – FIND today announced that Dr William Rodriguez will be its new Chief Medical Officer. Dr Rodriguez is the founder and former CEO of Daktari Diagnostics. As CMO, Dr Rodriguez will oversee FIND’s Technology and Clinical Department, taking responsibility for FIND’s assay development and clinical trials programme and providing oversight of FIND’s disease programmes together with FIND’s CEO, Dr Catharina Boehme.

“We are thrilled to welcome Bill as CMO at FIND,” said Dr Boehme. “His years of experience in assay development and launching new diagnostics, as well as his work with health commodity suppliers on important issues such as pricing, will very strongly serve FIND’s technology and trials programmes, and provide key strategic input.”

Dr Rodriguez is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale University School of Medicine. He trained in infectious disease medicine at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he served as chief medical resident. While a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, he established a research programme on the use of appropriate diagnostics in global health. As Chief Medical Officer of the William J. Clinton Foundation, he helped broker pricing agreements between African and Asian governments and the major suppliers of HIV drugs and diagnostic tests. He has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on global HIV and tuberculosis treatment, advised more than a dozen national governments and served as a member of WHO’s global HIV guidelines committee.

“The Board is very pleased with this appointment. Bill’s experience across diseases, including HIV, hepatitis C and tuberculosis, combined with his depth of global health experience in diagnostics and treatment will help us to advance FIND’s strategic priorities in the coming years,” said Mark Kessel, Chair of FIND’s Board of Directors.

“I look forward to joining the FIND team,” said Dr Rodriguez. “No other organization plays such a unique role in increasing access to needed diagnostic tests in developing countries.”

Dr Rodriguez will join FIND in November of this year.

For more information, please contact:
Julie Archer, Senior Communications Officer, FIND
Email: Julie.Archer@finddx.org
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