PROPEL Tech Hub
Lead Agency: Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern PA
State Served: Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
Region: Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD MSA
Core Technology Area: end-to-end precision medicine
Contact: Anthony P. Green (anthony.green@sep.benfranklin.org)
Media Contact: Jason Bannon (Jason.bannon@sep.benfranklin.org)
Organizational Link: https://www.sep.benfranklin.org/partner/propel/
The PROPEL Tech Hub, led by the Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, aims to become a global leader in end-to-end precision medicine. This Tech Hub will leverage the region’s density of life sciences assets and research and development expertise to weave together disparate technology applications: biotechnology, medical technology, genomics, synthetic biology supported by artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, and more. Together, these tech-enabled efforts will deliver new ways to diagnose, prevent, and treat disease, increasing evidence-based technology applications that improve morbidity and mortality and decrease health disparities.
The PROPEL Tech Hub seeks to catalyze the next generation of health interventions to improve health equity by uniting institutions, civic organizations, and private enterprises to propel the region in end-to-end precision medicine.
This consortium’s proposal includes plans to:
- Create a centralized agency within the region responsible for developing a skilled workforce to fill vacancies and meet employer needs;
- Increase efficiency for commercialization of new technologies to help with manufacturing challenges and regulatory assistance;
- Improving capacity to train diverse biomanufacturing workforce to advance technologies and process speed-to-market in the sector;
- Accelerate development, testing and commercialization of precision medicines by creating a research and data-sharing network; and
- Facilitate collaboration across the three-state region by creating the organizational culture and charters for the Hub, executing an operating agreement among project leads and other Hub stakeholders to ensure goals are well-integrated, and exploring the potential formation of a non-profit organization dedicated to hosting and growing the partnership.
To ensure that the impacts of the Tech Hub projects benefit the entire region, the consortium is committed to prioritizing equity by focusing on workforce opportunities across projects and healthcare access specifically in majority-minority cities like Philadelphia, Camden, and Wilmington.
This summary is based on information submitted by the applicants.
Designee Narrative (PDF) (submitted by the designee in its Phase 2 application package)
Additional Designations Earned in Region
