The state of tick-borne illness diagnostics: Learn, engage, and accelerate
Invisible International is launching a yearlong “Tick-borne Illness Diagnostics Development Incubator,” starting with an online briefing, “The State of Tick-Borne Illness Diagnostics: Learn, Engage, Accelerate.”When: Saturday, October 30, 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. EST.
Registration: https://www.hack.invisible.international/
The weak link in reducing the public health burden of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses is the lack of fast, cheap, and reliable diagnostic approaches. Early Lyme diagnoses are often delayed because the Lyme screening tests aren’t reliable in the first month after infection and not everyone produces or notices a bullseye rash. In the later stages of the disease, antibody testing can be unreliable in the sickest patients, those whose antibody production may be hobbled by concurrent infections or a weak immune system. There’s also no simple diagnostic roadmap to follow when multiple tick-borne pathogens may be involved.
This briefing will mark the start of Invisible International’s “Tick-borne Illness Diagnostics Development Incubator,” a yearlong collaborative forum designed to bring together teams of multidisciplinary innovators to look at diagnostic protocols, processes, and tests anew, with an eye to accelerating better solutions. We’ll bring together researchers, diagnostics companies, patient representatives, government representatives, and industry funders to brainstorm on ways to remove roadblocks to innovation. We’ll also feature lectures covering areas such as concept seed funding, getting through the regulatory pipeline, and fundamentals of low-cost diagnostics design.
This incubator is designed to complement the LymeX Diagnostics Moonshot, which will be offering prizes for the development for better early Lyme diagnostics over three phases. [Lyme X is funded with $25 million from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation and co-managed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Competition details will be posted later this year at Challenge.gov. ] The Invisible Incubator is way to gain a competitive edge in this competition, by making it easy to engage with clinical, lab, and collaborators, and by participating in forums where past and emerging technologies will be discussed.
The “The State of Tick-Borne Illness Diagnostics” briefing will feature:
Introductions:
Mark Lovell, PhD, former Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer at ImPACT Applications, Inc.; Chair of Invisible’s Lovell Innovation Platform and Advisory Board
Valerie Montecalvo, President, Bayshore Recycling; Chair of Invisible’s Montecalvo Platform for Tick-Borne Illness Education and Strategic Initiatives
Keynote: The human cost of poor diagnostics
Nicole Bell, executive, entrepreneur, and author of What Lurks in the Woods: Struggle and Hope in the Midst of Chronic Illness, A Memoir
·Demystifying commercialization
Rhonda Shrader, Invisible International Innovation Chair; Executive Director, Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship, UC Berkeley; and NSF I-Corps, Bay Area Node Director
Amanda Elam, CEO/Cofounder of Galaxy Diagnostics, Inc. and Entrepreneurship Research Fellow at Babson College
Why patient input is important
Emily Lovell, Invisible International Advisory Board and computer science researcher/educator
Perspectives from the diagnostic trenches
Representatives from three specialty labs will share their take on today’s diagnostic technologies today and what’s needed in the future
Invisible International
Nev Zubcevik, DO, CMO, Call for better diagnostic tools from the clinical trenches
Laura Lott, CEO, Learn, engage, accelerate: Why your team should join the challenge
The “Tick-borne Disease Diagnostics Innovation Incubator” is a component of Invisible’s Lovell Innovation Platform, funded by a trailblazing donation by Mark and Eileen Lovell. Thanks to their generous support, Invisible International is delivering programs that will change the landscape of tick-borne illness and other invisible illnesses through community action, education, and research.
When: Saturday, October 30, 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. EST.*
Registration: https://www.hack.invisible.international/
*This presentation will be recorded and posted on Invisible’s website after the event
