TENNESSEE economic and entrepreneurial leaders are heading to Amsterdam and Paris next week, reinforcing this state's interest in innovation, cross-border trade and foreign direct investment in health, energy, aerospace and other sectors.

Nashville travelers focused to varying degrees on healthcare include Amsterdam-bound ECHAlliance Executive Director - US Operations Eric Thrailkill; Decode Health Co-Founder and CEO Chase Spurlock PhD; Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce SVP Economic Development and International Business Lori Odom; and attorney John Scannapieco, a partner in Womble Bond Dickinson.

Governor Bill Lee

Two other Tennesseans are headed next week to Paris: Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and Stuart McWhorter, who is Lee's commissioner of economic and community development (TNECD), as well as chairman of Tennessee Technology Development Corporation dba Launch Tennessee.

According to a release issued this morning from TNECD, Lee and McWhorter's agenda includes attending the 55th International Paris Air Show, meeting with current and potential future creators of jobs and investors in Tennessee, ranks which are to include current Tennessee foreign direct investors (FDI) Schneider Electric and Orano.

More than 1,000 foreign-based establishments currently operate in Tennessee, employing more than 162K workers in 78 of Tennessee's 95 counties, according to TNECD data.

Tennessee's dealings with business and industry are often coordinated by TNECD agents in key regions. More here.

On Monday, June 16, "Mind the Traps" will be the title of the ECHAlliance panel in which the aforementioned Thrailkill, Odom and Scannapieco will provide their audience guidance for European businesses entering the U.S. market. See VNC's previous reporting on the trio's crossborder work with the UK's West Yorkshire Combined Authority (link here).

Chase Spurlock

Chase Spurlock, CEO and co-founder of Nashville-based Decode Health, will next week present his company during an Amsterdam "innovation pitching" session, alongside 13 other founders chosen by the ECHAlliance, which is running its event in coordination with organizers of the massive HLTH Europe 2025 conference.

ECHAlliance describes its June 16 program as focused on "Digital Health at Scale: Innovating, Regulating, Financing & Procuring the Future of Healthcare Systems and Technologies."

Decode Health describes its corporate mission as offering "an AI platform as a service to accelerate precision medicine R&D for pharma, diagnostic, med device and tech companies. We help our clients integrate and analyze multiomics, clinical data, and social determinants of health to increase R&D efficiency, streamline biomarker discovery, and deliver rapid, actionable insights that drive innovation and improve patient outcomes."

Asked by VNC why he chose his latest European journey, Spurlock said, "Beyond my role at Decode, I have a strong personal commitment to fostering international collaborations that benefit Nashville and support other entrepreneurs in our community. I've been fortunate to work with global teams whose perspectives and resources have meaningfully enriched our work. I believe international partnerships are essential to accelerating innovation, validating technologies across diverse populations, and unlocking new market opportunities. I'm excited to continue working with [Lori Odum, John Scannapieco, Eric Thrailkill] on these initiatives. As you know, we visited [University of Leeds, England] earlier this year and look forward to returning in September. I'm energized by the opportunity to help build a strategic pathway that connects our region's expanding life sciences ecosystem with global partners who share a vision for advancing precision medicine."

Spurlock said that while at the ECHAlliance-HLTH Europe events, his goals include, quoting:

• Expand Decode's partner network at a single event that convenes global pharma, medtech, healthtech, payer, and health system leaders.
• Showcase Nashville's growing AI-driven precision medicine ecosystem to a European audience and foster international collaboration.
• Identify R&D collaborators and clinical deployment sites for an upcoming biomarker and clinical decision support initiative targeting sepsis and other acute conditions.
• Participate in an international pitch event alongside companies from Montenegro, the UK, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, and the U.S., with an opportunity to explore partnerships with UK and EU-based companies, including those seeking U.S. commercialization strategies in collaboration with Decode Health.

Toward such ends, Spurlock said his key messages are, quoting:

• Decode Health is building the AI and analytics foundation that transforms multiomic and real-world data into precision healthcare, enabling smarter diagnostics, more targeted therapies, and faster innovation across life sciences and clinical practice.
• Decode's secure cloud platform integrates multiomic, clinical, and social-determinant data, applies advanced graph analytics, AutoML, and generative AI, and reduces biomarker discovery and clinical decision support timelines by more than 10x.
• Our business model combines service fees, software licensing, and shared-risk partnerships that align incentives and accelerate innovation. This structure has been validated through collaborations with leading life sciences and diagnostics companies, including Quest Diagnostics, to enable more scalable and efficient R&D.
• Decode partners with medtech companies to integrate novel biomarkers and build clinical informatics and risk dashboards that improve outcomes and reduce costs. We work closely with researchers, health systems, and other stakeholders to co-develop and deploy next-generation diagnostics that advance patient care, including an expanded partnership we will discuss further at HLTH Europe focused on infection control and enhanced sepsis detection.

VNC welcomes notes on readers' sustained crossborder investment or entrepreneurship. Please write the author via LinkedIn. VNC

. last edited 13 June 1226