Sandeep Patel is currently an independent consultant and entrepreneur with deep expertise at the intersection of science, business, and global health security. He served as the first Director of BARDA’s Division of Research, Innovation, and Ventures (DRIVe), where he built and led a team that managed a large portfolio of investments in early stage companies to enhance our preparedness for future health security threats. He also built the US’s first public-private venture capital fund, into which over $250M was invested on behalf of BARDA.
In anticipation of future known and unknown health security threats, including new pandemics, biothreats, and climate-related health emergencies, our answers need to be much faster, cheaper, and less disruptive to other operations.
The U.S. government should establish a public-private National Exposome Project (NEP) to generate benchmark human exposure levels for the ~80,000 chemicals to which Americans are regularly exposed.
Federally financed debt can help fill critical funding gaps and complement ongoing federal grants, contracts, reimbursement, and regulatory policies and catalyze private-sector investment in innovation.