A group of more than 50 organizations has formed the Texas Global Health Security Innovation Consortium (TEXGHS) to coordinate efforts to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 and future pandemics by supporting innovators working toward pandemic readiness, response, recovery and resiliency.

The initial focus of the consortium is the coordination of current resources in the Austin innovation ecosystem, and that will be followed by a statewide expansion to develop additional capacity to expedite research, development, commercialization, workforce development and manufacturing at the intersection of health security and technology.

TEXGHS is already supporting a variety of pilot projects due to the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We are working with innovators across a range of areas including mass vaccination systems, large-scale decontamination, PPE education through gamification and community contact tracing,” said Dr. Lisa McDonald, director of health care at Austin Technology Incubator and co-founder of PandemicTech. “We are also in the process of defining focus areas for future pilot projects to align with statewide goals.We are committed to understanding health security priorities at the community, city and state government levels, and exploring how best our efforts can support those priorities.”

The consortium’s broad goal is to improve global health security, which the 2019 Sydney Statement on Global Health Security describes as “a state of freedom from the scourge of infectious disease, irrespective of origin or source.”

TEXGHS will guide coordinated efforts among members, including company participation across incubator and accelerator programs, investment , institutional research collaboration, cooperation among networks of global health security experts, representation to local, state and federal governments, resource mapping across the innovation ecosystem, prototyping, engineering and legal and regulatory support.

Founding TEXGHS Ecosystem Partners include:

• Austin Chamber of Commerce
• Austin Community College Bioscience Incubator
• Austin Healthcare Council
• Austin Innovation Group
• Austin Technology Incubator, The University of Texas at Austin
• Babson Diagnostics
• BioAustin
• C5 Accelerate
• Capital City Innovation
• Dell Medical School, The University of Texas at Austin
• DivInc
• Drug Dynamics Institute, College of Pharmacy, The University of Texas at Austin
• Global Health Security Network
• Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
• HealthClicks
• Medical Innovation Collaborative
• MedtoMarket
• The Neutrino Donut LLC
• Nursing Innovation Hub
• Panache
• PandemicTech
• Tech Ranch Austin
• The Temple Health & Bioscience District
• Texas Advanced Computing Center, The University of Texas at Austin
• Texas Innovation Center, The University of Texas at Austin
• TherapeUTex, College of Pharmacy, The University of Texas at Austin

TEXGHS is recruiting partner organizations to join the consortium, as well as startup companies interested in receiving support to commercialize solutions at the interface of health security and technology.