During its February meeting, NLM’s Board of Regents, senior staff, and other leaders from NIH heard from Susannah Fox, chief technology officer of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), about the innovative work under way at the HHS IDEA Lab and her efforts to make data, health information, and tools more available.

“When I started my research into the social impact of the Internet back in the year 2000, the NLM was already ahead of the game making sure that people had access to the information and data that they needed,” she said.

Susannah Fox, HHS Chief Technology Officer, spoke to the NLM Board of Regents at its February meeting.

Since 2000, we’ve come a long way. “This moment we are living through is opening doors to innovative thinking and scientific discovery in people’s pursuit of health,” said Fox. “It is our shared mission—my mission as the chief technology officer at HHS and your mission working with the NLM—to lift barriers from the path of the public. The more we can do that, the better off we are going to be.”

The HHS IDEA Lab is working to make that happen through collaborations and NLM is on board. The HHS Idea Lab website has featured NLM’s Pill Image Recognition Challenge, Pillbox data set, and a video search tool.

One of Fox’s passions, said NLM’s Acting Director Betsy Humphreys, is helping to catalyze new ways to think about challenges and develop solutions through technology that deliver impact and improve health care.

NLM is happy to help.