UT Austin and partners launch new consortium to support innovators fighting COVID-19

AUSTIN, Texas - A group of more than 50 organizations in the academic, public and private sectors has formed the Texas Global Health Security Innovation Consortium (TEXGHS).

The consortium, organized by Austin Technology Incubator at the University of Texas at Austin, will coordinate efforts to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 and future pandemics by supporting innovators working toward pandemic readiness, response, recovery, and resiliency.

Officials say that the initial focus of the consortium is the coordination of current resources in the Austin innovation ecosystem. 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.

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The consortium’s broad goal is to improve global health security and it's 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, in a news release.

“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," Dr. McDonald adds.

Officials say COVID-19 has underscored the importance of global health security and the need to build more resilient communities, ready to respond to infectious disease threats and quickly return to normalcy. TEXGHS aims to lead a collaborative and well-coordinated effort to facilitate a quicker and more effective response for ongoing and future infectious disease threats.

The 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

Officials say TEXGHS continues to recruit 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.

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