Health 2.0 is excited to announce the first challenge for the 2011 cycle of the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge that will be live through the New Year!

Healthy People 2020, launched on December 2, 2010, is the Nation’s leading health promotion and disease prevention agenda for the decade, including goals, 40 plus topic areas, and 100s of data-driven objectives and targets. HP2020 is primarily aimed at achieving the goal of longer, healthier lives for all Americans. Now that they have launched, they’ve submitted the myHealthyPeople Challenge to the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge.

The myHealthyPeople Challenge is asking entrepreneurs, developers, health educators, public and clinical service providers to develop an engaging and empowering customized. Features could include mash-ups, easy-to-use data visualizations, analytics, reporting, and other novel combinations of national, state and community level health data. Applications should enable users to tailor their areas of interest and enable myHealthyPeople to be accessible on desktops and/ or mobile devices.

“The myHealthyPeople developer challenge is a great opportunity to put the power of IT to work to help communities customize their approach to implementing our national goals, at a local level” said Todd Park, Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “By integrating data with community guidelines related to Healthy People 2020, action through the application of technology can make positive strides to improve health and health care in America.”

This challenge is offering First ($2500), second ($1000) and third ($500) place prizes. Winners will be awarded travel and free admission to the Health 2.0 Conference in San Diego, March 21-22, 2011, will meet HHS leadership to demonstrate their applications, and winning applications will be showcased on healthypeople.gov.

So make sure to check out the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge website and take a look at the challenge requirements. Team registration is live and the deadline deadline to submit a solution is Monday, March 7, 2011.

About the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge: The Health 2.0 Developer Challenge was launched on June 2, 2010 at the Community Health Data Initiative (CHDI) meeting at the IOM, with support from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The goal of the challenge is to build on the efforts of CHDI and to bring the Health 2.0 Community together for rapid application development, both online and in several physical code-a-thons. Since its launch, the Developer Challenge has had six winners announced for a number of major initiatives including the Blue Button Challenge from Markle Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundatiion, Move YourApp! Developer Challenge from Catch and HopeLab, Real-Time Patients-Driven Data Challenge from Practice Fusion and Accelerating Wireless Health Adoption through a Standardized Social Network Platform from West Wireless Health Institute.

Recent winners of the Enabling Community Use of Data for Cancer Prevention and Control Challenge by National Cancer Institute and the Developer’s Challenge for Consumer Apps to Visualize Health Care Quality Measures Challenge by Health 2.0 with support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will be announced before the end of the year. For more details see www.health2challenge.org