Whole Genome Sequencing Project is Finalist for HHS Innovates Award

Your vote will help select the “People’s Choice.”

The HHS Innovates competition applauds and rewards workplace innovation. It pushes public health to think “outside of the box” and develop new ways of tackling ongoing problems. This competition has generated more than 500 innovative projects over the past five years. And it is happening right now. Last month, HHS employees chose six finalist innovations.

Whole Genome Sequencing: The Future of Food Safety

Public voting is back online and will continue through June 13.

Whole Genome Sequencing is a cross-govermental project that gathers every agency responsible for controlling foodborne illness in America to combat Listeria. Each year more than 1,600 people get sick from Listeria, and about 1 in 5 dies. It is the third leading cause of death from food poisoning.

This project paves the way for replacing the many laboratory methods used today to detect and investigate foodborne illness with a single, fast method in whole genome sequencing.

Whole genome sequencing will cut the time needed to identify and characterize the bugs that make people sick in order to detect and investigate outbreaks.

Scientists map entire DNA sequences of microbes using whole genome sequencing.

Watch video on Whole Genome Sequencing: the Future of Food Safety.

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Scientists conducting whole genome sequencing in laboratory.

Whole genome sequencing is the begining of the biggest transformation of public health microbiology in decades. The faster we find the causes of outbreaks, the faster we can stop disease from spreading, protect health and save lives.