Imagine a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony where only the string section is audible. The players may be talented and the melodies timeless, but the composer’s work is not fully appreciated until the rest of the orchestra is heard. When you look at the state of health assets across the Southeast, a similar pattern emerges.
We are fortunate to live in a region that’s home to some of the world’s leading health research institutions, hospitals and governmental and nonprofit organizations. Yet too often, these groups operate in isolation, in silos. Imagine what could be achieved if they collaborated —- if they worked in concert like the sections of an orchestra.
That’s the mission of Health Connect South, a nonprofit organization founded to serve as an “on-ramp” to new kinds of collaboration that could transform the South’s health care landscape.
Health Connect South is bringing together the South’s most influential health leaders and innovators to create powerful alliances and foster medical breakthroughs. Participating organizations include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Cancer Society, Task Force for Global Health, Shepherd Center, Emory University, Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, Morehouse School of Medicine, Coca-Cola, UPS, CARE and many more.
To be successful, we must engage the broader health care community, not just leaders. We seek to attract our region’s leading health students and key decision makers as well as innovators from academic institutions, hospitals, start-ups, emerging and established industry players and those involved in the global application of health.
Health Connect South will be an ongoing initiative.
We’re starting this effort from a position of enormous strength. The South is home to a vibrant health care industry. When you inventory what’s here, it’s simply astounding. What New York is to finance and Hollywood is to film, Georgia is to health. Health Connect South is looking to position the state and region as a hub for health care innovation and collaboration that make the sector even stronger.
Let me provide one example of what I’m talking about.
Last year, Dr. Dennis Liotta, executive director of the Emory Institute for Drug Development, attended a Health Connect South event where he met Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, dean and president of the Morehouse School of Medicine. The two began chatting and realized they had a lot in common and much to offer one another. From this connection, they forged a partnership that resulted in the two institutions collaborating on multiple clinical trials.
Imagine the possibilities when these kinds of encounters occur by design.
Russ Lipari is founder and CEO of Health Connect South.
