Susannah Fox, HHS chief technology officer, sees herself as a lookout sitting in a crow’s nest. Perched high atop a ship’s mast, the lookout’s job is to alert the crew down below to both hazards and opportunities on the horizon.

“The opportunity that I see in the current landscape is in manufacturing—the ability to prototype, test and share designs for medical and assistive devices at lower costs and on a faster timeline than we’ve ever imagined,” she said at the recent “Making Health: Inspiring Innovative Solutions for Research and Clinical Care” symposium in Masur Auditorium.