News and Announcements
Stay updated on our latest announcements, challenge milestones, and community stories as we accelerate innovation for Lyme disease.
Sharing your personal experience is a powerful tool to reshape the healthcare landscape. Your lived experience has the unique power to shift perspectives for doctors, policymakers, and the general public.
However, turning personal memories into an award-winning submission requires a deliberate structure. To make the process as straightforward and simple as possible, we’ve created the following resources:
The LymeX Narrative Coaching Framework Guide: This guide breaks the official coaching framework into an actionable, step-by-step roadmap. It is designed to help you easily move from a raw "Napkin Sketch" to a refined entry competing for the $100,000 Grand Prize. > Access the Guide Here.
Crowdicity Platform Video Walkthrough: A quick, visual guide that takes the guesswork out of the technology. This video shows you exactly how to navigate, use, and submit your story on the Crowdicity platform seamlessly. > Watch the Video Here.
💡 Pro-Tip for the Grand Prize: If your story includes clinical or treatment insights, convert them into a Case Report on the CURE ID platform. Upload the confirmation PDF with your final entry form to qualify for the largest prize tiers.
Your voice matters, and getting it out into the world shouldn't feel like a hurdle. Use these tools to map out your submission at your own pace, and let’s change the future of Lyme care together.
Thank you to everyone who joined us for our LymeX Healthathon Kickoff on Monday, June 29th. We're so excited to see everyone's submissions over the next 5 weeks.
Here are the resources from the event:
The video recording for those who were unable to attend, and for those who want to watch the webinar again.
The full kickoff deck PDF which includes details about ways to participate, storytelling guide, prize information and evaluation criteria
The printable one-page guide to the Healthathon entry form
NOTE: We are compiling and verifying answers to the questions asked during the event, and we'll update our blog and FAQ with that information once it's ready.
In the meantime, please don't hesitate to send any questions about the Healthathon to lymex@healthplusprogram.io.
How might we turn people's lived experiences with Lyme and other tickborne diseases into shared stories and actionable insights that help drive solutions?
The LymeX Healthathon is a collaborative event with precisely that goal.
Register for our kickoff event, where we’ll share more details about the Healthathon, walk through registration, prizes, and special remarks from Dr. Kristen Honey of HHS.
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When you look at the momentum behind the LymeX Partnership today, it’s easy to forget that it started with a simple, powerful idea: the Lyme Innovation Roundtable.
Long before this became a multi-million dollar federal framework, a dedicated community of data advocates, clinicians, and patient champions came together to prove that crowdsourced, patient-driven data could transform how we approach complex illnesses.
The Journey at a Glance
2019–2020: We launched our first Healthathon and Health Plus initiatives, running three small, targeted proof-of-concept grants.
The Intermission: Innovation isn't always a straight line. Following that initial momentum, the project went through a quiet four-year period. While many early project updates were lost to old, deactivated web servers, the core community and data survived.
The Breakthrough: After years of steady advocacy, the rigorous data and success metrics from those first three small grants spoke for themselves. Federal leadership recognized the model's potential and committed to a historic $25 million investment to officially establish the LymeX Partnership.
Preserving Our Roots
We have intentionally preserved our original 2019 and 2020 blog posts right here on the platform in our new Historical Archive section.
We keep them visible because they are a testament to grit and continuity. They prove that the frameworks we are using today to tackle invisible illnesses and cost-of-illness tracking are deeply rooted, stress-tested, and built to last.
To everyone who shared an idea in the early days, and to everyone submitting solutions across our new 2026 tracks today: thank you for being part of this legacy. Let’s keep driving it forward!
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June 17, 2020
The healthcare space innovates slowly and is failing to meet the ever-increasing need for improved service delivery.
Hardworking clinicians, policy makers, providers, and government personnel often work in silos, engaging patients and families separately and neglecting their cross-disciplinary perspectives in the collective effort to improve outcomes for patients and their families. The healthcare space could benefit from introducing Human-Centered Design (HCD) approaches to help professionals in the space solve complex problems through thoughtful interactions and research methodologies. With this challenge in mind, Coforma developed Health+ (“health plus”): a program that utilizes HCD research to better understand the high-impact health issue placed in focus.
Click here to read more.
January 22, 2020
We’re kicking off 2020 by showcasing the ongoing successes of four Lyme Innovation “TOP Health” teams. One team received national recognition in the "Future of Healthcare Using AI" and won the TOP Prize Challenge, run by the U.S. Census Bureau in coordination with the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Click here to read more.
October 21, 2019
In November 2018, the HHS Office of the CTO launched its Lyme Innovation initiative to accelerate and co-create the next generation of Lyme disease solutions through public-private partnerships in collaboration with patients, practitioners, researchers, policy makers, and all stakeholders. So, where are we today?
Click here to read more.
April 15, 2019
The Lyme Innovation Roundtable Summary Report, published by the Center for Open Data Enterprise, is available with an overview of highlights, recommendations, and actionable next steps that participants discussed at HHS on December 4, 2018, to harness the power of collaboration, data-driven innovation, and emerging technologies for Lyme and tick-borne diseases.
Click here to read more.
March 19, 2019
After a 14-week “TOP Health” technology sprint, four of 11 teams delivered digital tools that utilized federal open data or artificial intelligence (AI) to address Lyme and tick-borne diseases. These teams’ results were showcased over two days of events at the White House Eisenhower Executive Office Building and at the Census Bureau as part of “The Opportunity Project” (TOP) Demo Day 2019.
Click here to read more.
January 17, 2019
The 14-week “TOP Health” tech sprint concluded with 10 teams delivering digital tools — built with Federal data and emerging technologies like AI — to improve clinical trials, experimental therapies, and data-driven solutions for complex challenges from cancer to Lyme and tick-borne diseases.
Click here to read more.
December 19, 2018
The first-ever Lyme Innovation Roundtable at HHS brought together over 80 leaders to harness the power of collaboration, data-driven innovation, and emerging technologies for Lyme and tick-borne diseases.
Click here to read more.
November 20, 2018
The Lyme Innovation initiative aims to accelerate innovation in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of tick-borne diseases through the development of next-gen technologies, interdisciplinary collaborations, and data-driven innovations for tick-borne diseases.
Click here to read more.