Building Medical Supply Chain Resilience through a U.S. Manufacturing Reserve and Digital Stockpile
Summary
To prevent another medical supply chain breakdown like the one experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Government must create an emergency response plan to activate domestic, local medical supply manufacturing. A national network of small-to-mid-size manufacturers and prototyping labs — a U.S. Prototyping and Manufacturing Reserve — should be formalized and incentivized to act as first responders for emergency innovation and medical supply manufacturing needs.
To properly equip the Reserve, the Federal Government should build a comprehensive library of open source medical and emergency supply “blueprints” — a U.S. Digital Stockpile — that consists of manufacturing requirements to enable distributed local emergency production. Combined, these new national security resources will facilitate rapid local response to both regional disasters and international supply chain disruptions.
The incoming administration must act to address bias in medical technology at the development, testing and regulation, and market-deployment and evaluation phases.
The incoming administration should work towards encouraging state health departments to develop clear and well-communicated data storage standards for newborn screening samples.
Proposed bills advance research ecosystems, economic development, and education access and move now to the U.S. House of Representatives for a vote
NIST’s guidance on “Managing Misuse Risk for Dual-Use Foundation Models” represents a significant step forward in establishing robust practices for mitigating catastrophic risks associated with advanced AI systems.