Innovating Patient Care Solutions
- Client:
- US Department of Health and Human Services
- Partners:
- Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation, LymeX Innovation Accelerator, PISTIS
- Delivery Date:
- May 31, 2021
Recent estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest that each year approximately 476,000 people may get Lyme disease in the United States.
Due to a wide variety of symptoms, people with Lyme disease are often misdiagnosed, overlooked, and not taken seriously, leading to damaging consequences to their health. There is growing frustration and mistrust from Lyme sufferers who have had their lives derailed by ineffective or inaccurate, “one size fits all” treatments. The degree of alarm and confusion about such a long-standing public-health issue has become detrimental to Lyme patients’ outcomes and diagnostics’ progression. This stagnation leaves healthcare professionals with limited resources and tools to accurately diagnose and support patients.

Reported Cases of Lyme Disease–United States, 2018 | CDC
When the US Department of Health and Human Services saw that the Health+ model could help address this challenge, the Health+ Lyme Disease program cycle was engaged to support the LymeX Innovation Accelerator (LymeX), a $25 million public-private partnership between the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation.

The Health+ Lyme Disease engagement included the development of the Health+ Lyme Disease Human-Centered Design (HCD) Report, the creation of a four-part animated video series illustrating the archetypes of Lyme, and a solution phase for innovating patient care solutions based on our research.