FDA Challenge Demo Day: Fostering Breakthrough Solutions in Food Safety

It's been a busy month at HHS, from the Health Datapalooza and the launch of our new Obesity Challenge, to the start of a new Ignite class, and then the 2015 Innovates Awards ceremony. Next up? Making the world safer for everyone who likes a good salad. On July 7th, I'll attend Demo Day for the 2014 Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Food Safety Challenge. The demos are taking place in College Park, MD, from 1-4 PM and are open to the public.

Register before midnight tonight (6/29) and join me there!

The Challenge, which launched last year, called on innovators from all disciplines to develop advanced methodologies to foodborne pathogen detection - specifically the detection of Salmonella in minimally processed fresh produce. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 1 in 6 Americans is sickened by foodborne illness annually, resulting in about 3,000 deaths each year. Contaminated produce is responsible for nearly half of those foodborne illnesses and almost a quarter of foodborne-related deaths. Thanks to the America COMPETES Act, the FDA has the authority to leverage this prize competition to drive innovative solutions in this area. After a rigorous review process, five finalists were selected from a field of 49 compelling entries. These five teams of talented scientists hail from Auburn University, Purdue University, University of California Davis and organizations including Pronucleotein, Inc and Mars, Inc. Each finalist team was awarded $20,000, and received expert advice from FDA scientists as they developed their detection methods, which employ technology such as magnetoelastic biosensors and microfluidic biochips. Learn more about their rigorous detection methods in the finalists' abstracts. The finalists will each have 15 minutes to present their concept and captivate the Challenge judges. The winner(s), who will be announced in late July, will be awarded the remainder of the prize purse, $400,000. We at HHS are committed to hacking red tape (#HackRedTape) and see challenge competitions like this one as key to our work in 3 ways:

• Encourage internal entrepreneurship - The program has developed first-of-their-kind regulatory and process frameworks within FDA. With new precedent under its belt, the agency can now use the prize competition model to address other complex problems aligned with its core mission of protecting consumers and advancing public health.
• Bring outside talent into government - The program brought sophisticated technologies and perspectives from leading scientists in academia and the private sector. FDA is now working with exciting new thinkers and the leadership plans to continue the discussion beyond Demo Day to inform different approaches to food safety.
• Tackle cross-departmental issues - In addition to efforts from several offices within FDA, experts from CDC, USDA and HHS supported the Challenge's development and execution. Successfully launching a program of this cross-agency scope is an impressive accomplishment, and we are extremely proud of the collaboration.

I am excited to see the finalists present their novel concepts to improve the safety of our food supply at Demo Day, and hope you'll join me there.

HHS Competes, an HHS IDEA Lab program, supports the use of prizes, challenges, and crowdsourcing to more effectively leverage the intelligence of the crowd to solve our nation's toughest problems.