At the White House: Presenting a Plan for Better Public Health Response

COVID-19 demonstrated that the United States’ current public health system is insufficient at providing for our common defense. Right now, we are unable to contain a fast-moving, novel pathogen and this inability is a threat to national, economic, and health security.  To combat this threat, we must design a new technology system capable of containing and tracking this fast-moving, novel pathogen.

Our current public health system is disconnected, with every jurisdiction operating in isolation, leaving national leaders without a comprehensive national understanding of the scope of any public health crisis. Developing an operational public health system at a national scale will require that we:

• Build a unified intelligence infrastructure, including a platform that predicts and detects localized disease threats in real-time, alerts appropriate nodes of risk-level to inform decisions and actions, and captures the outcomes of individuals and populations as they are happening,  enabling real-time characterization of the pathogen and facilitating unified containment efforts.
• Establish an authority infrastructure that places the right decisional authority at the right level with the right position under the right conditions.
• Develop an operational infrastructure by establishing a unified command representing the public and private sector that sits outside political hierarchy and can escalate response and allocate resources for the front lines.
• Restore the trust of the American people in our response infrastructure and institutions, as well as  the collective role of the individual

We must design a future that is connected through an advanced technological network that employs  real-time data, AI and machine learning. This will allow the United States’ public and private leadership to make informed decisions, leading to a unified containment response with any new viral or new pathogen outbreak. 

Listen to the full presentation here.