Lyme Innovation Roundtable
HHS Headquarters was outfitted with lime green, the color for Lyme disease awareness, for the first-ever Lyme Innovation Roundtable at HHS on Tuesday, December 4th, in Washington, DC.
The Lyme Innovation Roundtable brought together experts from government, industry, academia, clinical research institutions, patient advocacy groups, nonprofits, and philanthropic organizations to develop new strategies and approaches to address Lyme and tick-borne diseases. The Roundtable was hosted by the HHS Office of the Chief Technology Officer in collaboration with the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation, Bay Area Lyme Foundation, Center for Open Data Enterprise, and Ensemble.
The event included keynotes from HHS leaders, lightning talk presentations, and three facilitated breakout sessions for participants to contribute their ideas and insights to find innovative solutions to address Lyme disease. The afternoon breakout sessions used hands-on exercises to solicit individual feedback from diverse stakeholders including patients, advocates, providers, clinicians, researchers, and policy makers.
The morning keynotes set the tone for the collaborative nature of the event and highlighted how bringing together diverse stakeholders can lead to innovative solutions. Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan delivered the keynote for the event and emphasized that health innovation must be patient-driven and that patients should have the opportunity to provide meaningful input on the design of any potential solutions. In order to understand complex health conditions like Lyme disease, Deputy Secretary Hargan called on the stakeholders in the room to share and use data to develop innovative solutions to address Lyme disease.
During HHS Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Ed Simcox’s keynote, he explained how the Office of the CTO is working to accelerate innovation in Lyme disease prevention, diagnostics and treatments through the power of collaboration, data-driven innovation, and emerging technologies. The Lyme Innovation Roundtable is one example of this collaborative work.
Other keynotes and lightning talks during the roundtable:
- Adam Boehler, Senior Advisors to the HHS Secretary and Director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and as deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
- George Church, Founding Core Faculty and Lead, Synthetic Biology, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University
- Andy Kogelnik, Director, Open Medicine Institute, and
- Lorraine Johnson (video), Chief Executive Officer, LymeDisease.org
The Lyme Innovation Roundtable morning talks can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1FHCuuLzbA&t=17s.
For more information on the Lyme Innovation Roundtable or to otherwise get involved in the HHS Office of the CTO’s Lyme innovation efforts, please email: [email protected]
