JERSEY CITY, N.J., March 1, 2024 – Yesterday, Liberty Science Center hosted the inaugural meeting of SciTech Scity’s Healthcare Innovation Engine. Some 30 healthcare leaders from industry, government, and academia convened for the summit to identify specific medical challenges the Healthcare Innovation Engine will tackle, discuss possible prototype solutions, and set the path forward for developing and testing candidate solutions. As a result of the first meeting, the Engine identified cardiovascular health as its first focus area.

The Healthcare Innovation Engine features representatives from RWJBarnabas Health, Bristol Myers Squibb, Sheba Medical Center, EY, Nokia Bell Labs and universities and government agencies from the state of New Jersey. Commissioners from the New Jersey Department of Human Services and the Department of Health were also attendance in attendance at the closed-door session.

“We have chosen a challenge in healthcare, specifically trying to move healthcare into people’s homes through digital technologies to detect diseases at an early stage, maybe even ward off diseases,” said Paul Hoffman, President and CEO of Liberty Science Center. “We’re going to start locally and try to do this here in Jersey City, with evidence-based ways of showing that this works.”

“Our first area of focus will be cardiovascular diseases, an area we see a huge societal need but also an exciting amount of innovation happening that our partners happen to know something about,” remarked Alex Richter, Executive Director and Head of SciTech Innovation Hub. “This is just the first focus area where we see real need, but we will look at others too with the idea we will find the most exciting technologies we think can deliver potential benefits in the here and now and then prove in our high-need communities here in Hudson County that it can work.”

Ahead of the Engine’s next meeting, EY has assigned leads for each of the group’s work streams to execute the pilot program and begin performing a market scan for appropriate technologies that can address the cardiovascular focus area.

Following the closed-door session of the Healthcare Innovation Engine, Dr. Kaitlan Baston, the New Jersey State Health Commissioner, addressed an audience of over 100 leaders from the New Jersey and New York metro healthcare ecosystem with a keynote address. Taking inspiration from SciTech Scity, Dr. Baston highlighted the importance of innovation and transformation, specifically through partnerships that are going to make a change. She noted that healthcare innovators are the ones who will come up with the ideas, the medicines, and technology to make an impactful difference, and government agencies are stepping into the equation to ensure these innovations are transferred on a larger scale to reach the community.

The work of the Healthcare Innovation Engine will be done in conjunction with startup companies, community and health organizations, hospitals, universities, and other partners to test and validate specific products and solutions, as well as to conduct joint research efforts with the SciTech Scity academic ecosystem to collect the data needed to support broader adoption. LSC’s expansive university partner network includes Fairleigh Dickinson, NJIT, NYU, Princeton, Rowan, and Stevens Institute of Technology.

Hudson County, where both LSC and Jersey City Medical Center are located, will be one of the primary testing grounds for SciTech Scity’s digital health pilot initiatives. It is the most densely populated county in the most densely populated state, and one of the most diverse in the entire US with over 40% of residents being foreign-born population, and 40 different first languages being spoken. Its inland communities are also one of the most economically disadvantaged, ranking particularly high on measures of health vulnerability making it an ideal testing ground to address systemic challenges in the healthcare system.

This is because after decades of progress, life expectancy in America has been decreasing since 2014. And while COVID, opioids and gun violence have contributed to this downward spiral, it is chronic diseases – heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, respiratory afflictions, liver and kidney disease and others – that are the greatest culprits. A year-long examination by the Washington Post found that chronic diseases are killing more than twice as many Americans under age 65 as overdoses, homicides, suicides and car accidents combined. This mortality crisis is exacerbated by the country’s economic and racial divides. People in the poorest areas are 61 percent more likely to die early.

Moreover, the overwhelming driver of the enormous healthcare costs in the US come from “SICKcare,” reactive, mostly hospital-based, point-in-time interventions when diseases are very advanced. But Hoffman declared, “the paramount societal challenge we must focus on now is the transformation of our current SICKcare system to true HEALTHcare that detects illnesses in their infancy, or prevents illnesses entirely, through cost effective digital home health technology.”

He added that to advance the SICKcare-to-HEALTHcare vision, “we are establishing a diverse ecosystem of partners, including universities, hospital systems, public health authorities, and pharmaceutical and medical technology companies. Only through such a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach will we be able to transform a problem as pervasive as structural issues around healthcare access in America.”

About SciTech Scity
Liberty Science Center is developing a “Science City of Tomorrow” in Jersey City—a 30-acre innovation campus called SciTech Scity devoted to using science and technology to address humanity’s greatest challenges, from inadequate healthcare to climate change, and create a better future for all of us. The new campus, including the existing Liberty Science Center, home of the largest planetarium in the Western Hemisphere, will be officially named the Frank J. Guarini Innovation Campus and is scheduled to open in 2025 and 2026.

SciTech Scity will include $450 million of new construction: Edge Works, an eight-story business-creation center with laboratories, R&D spaces, office suites, co-working spaces, a tech exhibition gallery, and a state-of-the-art conference center; Scholars Village, 500 apartments built and operated by Alpine Residential for innovators, scientists, entrepreneurs, and other tech-forward individuals and families; Liberty Science Center High School, a new public magnet STEM high school built by the Hudson County Improvement Authority and operated by the Hudson County Schools of Technology; and Public Commons, three acres of outdoor space for art installations, food trucks, performances, farmers markets, science festivals, and maker fairs.

Learn more at SciTechScity.com.

About Liberty Science Center
Liberty Science Center (LSC.org) is a 300,000-square-foot, not-for-profit learning center located in Liberty State Park on the Jersey City bank of the Hudson near the Statue of Liberty. Dedicated to inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers and bringing the power, promise, and pure fun of science and technology to learners of all ages, Liberty Science Center houses the largest planetarium in the Western Hemisphere, 12 museum exhibition halls, a live animal collection with 110 species, giant aquariums, a 3D theater, live simulcast surgeries, a tornado-force wind simulator, K-12 classrooms and labs, and teacher-development programs. More than 250,000 students visit the Science Center each year, and tens of thousands more participate in the Center’s off-site and online programs. Welcoming more than 750,000 visitors annually, LSC is the largest cultural institution in New Jersey and the largest interactive science center in the NYC-NJ metropolitan area.