By Kim Krueger

Back at the Seventh Annual Health 2.0 Fall Conference in September, Box launched a Patient Education App Challenge with Dignity Health and The Social+Capital Partnership.

It was an appropriate launch pad to say the least, being like-minded as we are when it comes to our opinions regarding the cloud. Yet, as we know, health care is still relatively new to the cloud, and the entry of major cloud (and now HIPAA compliant) vendors like Box is a big deal.

Phase one of Box’s entry into the health care vertical has been largely centered on getting a diverse client base securely onto the cloud. Device companies, big pharma, life sciences, biotech, and health insurance companies are using Box just as cloud tools should be used — for storing, sharing, collaborating, and enabling mobility.

As most of us know from varied personal and professional use of the cloud, easy access to every piece of collateral in a remote or collaborative working environment increases velocity and enables relationships.

The Patient Education App Challenge is part of Box’s move into a phase two of sorts: “strategic data liquidity or care coordination in the cloud” as Box’s Managing Director of Healthcare and Life Sciences Missy Krasner called it.

The challenge developed out of talks between Dignity Health, the nation’s fifth largest hospital system, and Box around how hospitals can better deliver the huge amounts of content generated within any given hospital division. It launched with the Box API as a foundation for innovative opportunities to deliver appropriate materials to patients in engaging ways.

With Health 2.0 running the challenge, Box and Dignity received more than 150 applications, which have subsequently been narrowed down to five semi-finalists and one honorable mention (for those keeping track, three of these companies have demoed at Health 2.0 with another launching exclusively with us on Health 2.0 News and The Health Care Blog):

• WelVu: A cloud-based patient engagement platform that allows providers to create fully customized, patient-specific educational slide decks during appointments that capture medical illustrations, custom images, and verbal conversation.
• Wellbe: Hospitals use Wellbe’s Guided CarePaths to improve the experience and efficiency of helping patients succeed with their medical treatments and surgeries.
• CirrusHealth: A next generation, patient-centered transition-of-care platform developed by the neurosurgical team at Lenox Hill Hospital, part of the North Shore-LIJ Health System. The first product is a virtual office visit and patient discharge solution.
• GenieMD: Personal health management application that helps people track vitals, store medical records, and other health data, manage medications, and remotely monitor the health of a loved one. Blue Button Plus integration allows users to easily collect their medical records from multiple providers.
• LyfeChannel: Mobile programs for chronic patient care that translate a physician’s instructions into patient action. This helps patients build better lifetime habits for diet, activity, and drug adherence.
• Conversa Health (Honorable Mention): A platform that enables physicians to gather structured feedback on patients’ progress and outcomes through “digital checkups” between visits.

Semi-finalists will present at a private pitch day to judges former US CTO Aneesh Chopra, Box CEO Aaron Levie, Social+Capital’s Ted Maidenberg, and Dignity Health’s Vice President of Strategic Innovation Richard Roth in the hopes of winning $100,000 in the form of a convertible note from The Social+Capital Partnership. Some of the semi-finalists will be with Box at HIMSS14 where Box will also be presenting a live demo of their integration with CareCloud, a partnership that was also announced at Health 2.0 this past fall.

The Challenge winner will be announced in April, and in the meantime keep an eye on Box and the expanding health care cloud.

Kim Krueger is a Research Analyst at Health 2.0.