Coming Together to Save Lives

The following is a post from the members of the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition, #C19Coalition co-chaired by Dr. Jay Schnitzer, Chief Medical and Technology Officer at MITRE, and Dr. John Halamka, President of Mayo Clinic Platform. To view the original post, click here.

Pandemics thrive in confusion.

Not because diseases like COVID-19 have intent, but because the lack of a focused response makes the spread of disease so much easier.

Pandemics stress our healthcare delivery system. We are now familiar with the generalized public health measures that help contain the spread of infectious disease, including social distancing, hand washing, self-quarantine, cancellation of large public events, and school closures. As this New York Times article highlights, a targeted response will cause less disruption and be more effective.

Today, we need to leverage the strengths of the private sector. By bringing together healthcare organizations, technology companies, non-profits, academia, and startups, we can leverage their unique strengths for the benefit of all.

Over the past week, we’ve launched the Covid-19 Healthcare Coalition involving Amazon Web Services, Arcadia Health, athenahealth, Buoy Health, the CommonWell Health Alliance, Epic, HCA Healthcare, Intermountain Healthcare, LabCorp, Leavitt Partners, MassChallenge, Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, MITRE, nference, Rush University System for Health, Salesforce, and University of California Healthcare System.

We’ve already begun focused efforts to increase COVID-19 testing capacity for the country, to coordinate early therapies, and to accelerate vaccine development.

We established guiding principles for the coalition:

1. Everyone participates for the benefit of those impacted by COVID-19.
2. Everyone cooperates and openly seeks to assist each other when possible.
3. Nobody will get paid. Bring your resources and no money will be exchanged.
4. Verbal agreements will suffice to get us started.
5. If you agree to these terms and conditions, you’re in.

Our first task is to share learnings and encourage innovation across the coalition. We’re moving fast to support technology and policy innovations. MITRE, a national research and development center, is serving as program manager.

Pandemics thrive in confusion and wither against a united, clear-eyed attack.

Let’s shut down COVID-19 together.