Reported cases of Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases more than doubled from 2004 to 2018, and are currently at an all-time high. Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses present an urgent public health challenge with nearly 400,000 new cases per year. In response to this crisis, CODE co-hosted the Lyme Innovation Roundtable with the Office of the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in December 2018. The Roundtable convened experts and patients, and identified high-value datasets and existing resources from all sectors to improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of Lyme disease.
The Roundtable’s participants encouraged HHS to leverage public-private partnerships and forge new collaborations to drive innovation and accelerate solutions for Lyme. CODE summarized their input in a report that described actionable next steps to harness the power of collaboration, data-driven innovation, and emerging technologies for Lyme and tick-borne diseases. You can read more about the Roundtable on this HHS blog post and CODE’s blog post here.
The Roundtable and CODE’s report laid the groundwork for the LymeX Innovation Accelerator, a $25 million public-private partnership launched in 2020 to expedite progress and catalyze change in Lyme disease research. In April 2021, CODE co-hosted a LymeX Roundtable with HHS and the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation to convene expert stakeholders from the Lyme community to overcome obstacles to progress and develop new data-driven strategies to tackle the disease. You can now read the summary report from that Roundtable and join the conversation at lymex.crowdicity.com
CODE is continuing our work on Vector-Borne Diseases is continuing through support for work on the National Public Health Strategy for the Prevention and Control of Vector-Borne Disease in Humans, in a project with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). With the CDC’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, and in partnership with MITRE, we will be hosting a Roundtable in the spring to gather additional public input on the national strategy.
