COVID-19: Non-profit group partners with biotech consortium to crowd-source PPE solutions

Healthcare Ready, a nonprofit that works to strengthen public-and private-sector healthcare supply chains, and Bio, a consortium of biotech and pharmaceutical companies promoting innovation, have partnered to create an online supply sharing hub to meet personal protective equipment (PPE) and other needs during the growing pandemic.

The BIO Coronavirus Hub was created to try to link industries, academic centers and commercial laboratories who have masks, respirators, gowns and other PPE as well as innovative ideas to help breach what is becoming a desperate supply need in the face of COVID-19, says Nicolette A. Louissaint, PhD, executive director of Healthcare Ready.

Healthcare Ready was formed after Hurricane Katrina to strengthen public-and private-sector healthcare supply chains.

Louissaint, who has a doctorate in pharmacology and molecular sciences, and is a former U.S. State Department foreign affairs officer who served as the senior advisor to the department’s Special Coordinator for Ebola during that epidemic in 2014, is also encouraging hospitals to reach out to industries, businesses, and other labs.

There are academic labs and commercial businesses who use PPE that have either stopped or slowed their work and might be able to donate their supplies while production lines ramp up elsewhere.

She is also encouraging healthcare organizations to critically assess when, where, how and who needs PPE as the current crisis continues.

Meanwhile, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) also has put out a call for ideas for conserving PPE and identifying new sources.

For more tips on conserving PPE and steps to fill the supply line, see future information in Inside Accreditation and Quality and on the Accreditation & Quality Compliance Center.

A.J. Plunkett is editor of Inside Accreditation and Quality, a Simplify Compliance brand publication.