Introduction

For the past five years the Scowcroft Institute for International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service has been hosting an Annual Pandemic Policy Summit. The goal of these summits is to address the most pressing issues facing scientists, policymakers, and the overall pandemic preparedness and response enterprise. This year, the summit was held virtually in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and while the pandemic was discussed at length, we set a goal to look beyond the current crisis and address the next pandemic coming down the road. While we may not be able to predict what disease will cause the next pandemic, we have pinpointed three major topic areas that we believe should be addressed in order to learn the lessons of COVID-19 and strengthen pandemic response in the future. These topic areas are: 1) critical supplies and supply chains; 2) intellectual property and the bioeconomy; and 3) the changing world of biological data. This paper discusses each of these topic areas in detail and provides recommendations to improve pandemic preparedness and response.