NEWDIGS (New Drug Development Paradigm) is a global “think and do” tank focused on improving health by accelerating appropriate, timely, and equitable access to biomedical products in ways that are scalable and sustainable for the system. 

NEWDIGS was launched in 2009 at MIT to provide a safe haven design laboratory for diverse stakeholders and competing organizations within the life science and healthcare industries to collaborate on mission-critical system challenges. We transitioned from MIT to Tufts Medical Center in 2022 to be closer to a patient care environment, becoming the flagship program in the new Center for Biomedical System Design within the Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies. 

Our system innovation leverages a case-based approach to explore different archetypes of product classes and therapeutic areas and identify actionable insights for system change. Our innovation process follows five key steps: 

• Elucidate Challenges: illuminate barriers and potential enablers for a target challenge for each stakeholder, including cross-stakeholder dynamics  
• Design Solutions: co-create, vet, and refine system innovations, leveraging current, historical, or synthetic case studies selected by our collaborator community. 
• Enable Implementation: address significant barriers to the implementation and scaling of solutions designed including, for example, policy, technology, incentives, processes 
• Disseminate and Catalyze: develop and deploy practical education and tools regarding the “why do” and “how to” for critical end-user audiences to fuel adoption 
• Monitor and Learn: leverage insights from real-world implementation of solutions as they emerge in the marketplace to accelerate the development of best practices 

Examples of outputs from our recent activities in each of these areas can be found in Resources. 

Benefits of Consortium Membership 

• Be at the Table: help shape emerging system solutions 
• Market Intelligence: identify emerging trends, challenges, and solutions, from diverse stakeholder perspectives 
• New Opportunities: harness opportunities for collective action to accelerate system readiness for emerging innovations 
• Community and Partnerships: build valuable new cross-sector relationships that endure outside of NEWDIGS 

If you are interested in discussing Membership, please contact tuftsmcnewdigs@tuftsmedicine.org