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BARDA Launches Diagnostics, Medical Devices Accelerator

NEW YORK – The US Department of Health and Human Services' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority has launched the next generation of its accelerator network with a diagnostics and medical devices program, the agency announced on Monday. 

The International Consortium for Research, Engineering, Acceleration of Technology Excellence (I-CREATE) is intended to support the "development and acceleration of game-changing diagnostics and medical devices to detect, prevent, or respond to medical consequences that result from health security threats," the agency said in a statement. 

I-CREATE will be based in Orange County, California, and led by the nonprofit incubator University Lab Partners (ULP) in collaboration with the Consortium for Improving Medicine with Innovation & Technology (CIMIT) at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and the life sciences research and development marketplace Science Exchange, which helps with purchasing and supplying for life sciences firms. 

The agency also announced a therapeutics and vaccines hub. Both hubs are part of the BARDA Accelerator Network, and three more hubs are expected to be announced later this year. The hubs "will create a global network to foster the growth of the health security innovation ecosystem with commercialization and wraparound support to enable development, evaluation, validation, and commercialization of next-generation medical countermeasures," the agency noted. The other hubs will include digital health tools and technologies focused on public health preparedness and response.