By Graeme Ossey

Health 2.0 is excited to announce the launch of the Novartis Thalassemia App Challenge sponsored by Novartis Oncology. There is a critical need to develop an innovative app solution that assists Thalassemia patients and their families in managing the disease, including monitoring/tracking of key parameters, treatment/medication adherence and recording of daily personal facts.

Thalassemia is a diverse family of genetic disorders affecting red blood cell production, causing anemia and consequently, patients suffer significant complications.¹ Thalassemia can range from milder types to severe cases that start in infancy and require regular blood transfusions for patient survival.² Clinical complications can vary by type of thalassemia, and patients also  may develop iron overload as a consequence of the disease or because of extra iron absorbed from blood transfusions.³ Most patients with thalassemia are of South and Southeast Asian, Mediterranean or Middle Eastern origin, with immigration broadening the global prevalence.⁴

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By Adam Wong, ONC and Abdul Shaikh, NCI

ONC and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) are challenging app developers to create new tools to help cancer survivors. The new Crowds Care for Cancer: Supporting Survivors Challenge is asking app developers to create new tools meant to help survivors manage their care after they have completed cancer treatment.

HHS has had a series of developer contests that have spawned the creation of tools and apps to help patients and doctors better manage care. Some past app challenges include:

• the Million Hearts Risk Check Challenge
• the Blue Button Mash Up Challenge, and
• the Ensuring Safe Transitions Challenge.

Cancer patients need more care coordination

The number of cancer survivors in the United States is currently estimated at 14 million people. With improvements in cancer screening, diagnosis, and treatment, as well as the aging of the United States, this number is expected to rise.

While celebrating advances in cancer care, there remains a need to help patients manage their health after they have completed their primary treatment. Cancer survivors experience a host of physical and psychosocial long-term and late effects of the disease, and it’s the treatment of this that requires coordinated follow-up care.

Despite significant progress in cancer treatment, the complex and often fragmented state of end-of-treatment care may lead to harmful breakdowns in patient-provider communication. This can result in unmet health care needs. Better communication, data exchange, and care coordination have been shown to help the patients.

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Nine months ago New York Digital Health Accelerator‘s program began. Now it’s time for demo day, when eight companies get to show off their progress to date. NYDHA is run by the Partnership Fund for New York City and the New York eHealth Collaborative and was designed for growth-stage companies developing products for providers and patients in the care coordination, patient engagement, and health care analytics fields.

Who: NYDHA’s first class of eight companies:

ActualMeds’ software supports team-based medication management and reconciliation for high risk patients taking multiple drugs to reduce their drug related hospitalization and readmissions.

Aidin helps patients make the right choice of post-acute care providers by providing them with ratings and reviews on local rehab centers and nursing homes.

Avado partners with healthcare businesses to provide a platform that allows clinicians and patients to securely communicate, track, and manage health information.

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By Graeme Ossey

We are excited to announce the finalists of the Shire ADHD Transitions Challenges! The five finalists submitted innovative ideas for web or mobile apps that will help young adults, who are entering college or the workforce, manage their medication and help them conquer daily organizational and life management challenges. Let’s meet the finalists!

• The ActionsHero App works the way that the ADHD brain works best; fast-paced, fun and with instant rewards. It takes time management to the next level in an integrative, fun way that keeps people actively involved on a daily basis and moving forward in small steps. Breaking down tasks into 8 areas of life helps maintain important priorities and gives the balanced outlook often missing in schedule planning.

• ADHDGo will provide developmentally appropriate help to young people with ADHD through social support opportunities, practical life skills, expert information and self-management tools as they transition from adolescence through college and ultimately to the working world. The product utilizes a single convenient mobile website that is available anywhere at any time via desktop, laptop, smartphone or tablet.

• GenR Media has created the Life Balance Zone – College Life app. The app contains 4 main zones that are designed to support the student throughout their time in college – Planning Zone, Study Zone, Resource Zone, Reward Zone. Features like required study time and morning check-ins are built in the app to help the student balance their life in college and stay on track and reward him/her extra study breaks, playing a brain game featured in the app, or using small reward gift cards given by friends or family.

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By Dave Whitlinger

This Saturday we opened voting to the public, giving the people a chance to select the designs they like best for the Patient Portal for New Yorkers. The Patient Portal will be a highly secure website allowing New Yorkers to log in to access their own medical records, with the same ease and efficiency with which they have accessed their financial transactions for years.

Since we expect patients to use the Patient Portal regularly (in order to find out about recent lab results or prescriptions, or just as a reminder to schedule their next physical) we aim to create an interface that is both pleasant to look at and easy to use.

In January of this year, we opened a challenge that invited designers and software developers to submit prototypes for what that interface should look like. And now that the best of those designs are in, we are letting the public—those who will ultimately use the portal—rank the ones they like the most. Voting will be open until April 23rd, and we ask that you take a look and help us determine the interfaces you find the clearest, most straightforward and user-friendly.

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By Graeme Ossey

A recent study by Boston Children’s Hospital and Mayo Clinic found that a staggering 29.3% of children with ADHD experience the disorder well into adulthood. High School and College students with ADHD face the intimidating challenge of entering a less-structured environment upon graduation. While ADHD medicine helps, there is a critical need for technologies that help manage behaviors and encourage medication adherence.  The Shire ADHD Transitions Challenge is offering $150,000 in total prizes for technologies that will azid young adults and help them manage the transitions between high-school and college as well as between college and the work force.

Phase I of the challenge focuses on ideation and closes in less than two weeks on March 17, 2013. Five submissions will be awarded $5,000 based on the quality and viability of their idea. Phase I requirements include:

1. Mock-up or drawing of concept
2. 5-page written document explaining the proposed application

Phase II of the challenge will involve the development of working applications proposed in Phase I of the competition. Submissions for Phase II are due August 18th.  The top three submissions will receive $100,000, $20,000, and $5,000, respectively.

Join us in finding a solution to this growing problem by spreading the word about the challenge (click to tweet). Learn more about how you can get involved here!

By Hemali Thakkar

Let’s face it, as a startup in the health care space, it’s not easy to land a first pilot to demonstrate the value your new technology, much less get paid for one. Strict federal regulations, billion dollar EMR implementations, and the fear of privacy leaks have made our nation’s providers very risk averse and extremely cautious about working with early stage health tech companies. Implementing new technologies in hospitals, where there are strict IT guidelines relating to ensuring patient data privacy and heavy bureaucracy, is difficult. Large hospital systems and other health care service organizations simply do not have the bandwidth or resources to guide companies through these challenges and therefore are reluctant to partner with early stage companies.

What results is a problem we are all too familiar with – failure of new technologies to diffuse into the market. Startups face the classic chicken and egg problem. As a startup, you need some traction, or proof of evidence that your technology brings some value to your customer. But in order to show that you bring value, a startup needs to test out the technology in the health care setting. Houston, we have a problem!

The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), a non-profit that aims to catalyze economic growth in New York City’s five boroughs, recognized this problem early on and decided to tackle the issue head-on. After many health care stakeholder working groups and other research, NYCEDC launched PILOT Health Tech NYC in collaboration with Health 2.0, Blueprint Health, and Startup Health. PILOT Health Tech NYC matches early-stage health care technology companies (‘innovators’) with key NYC health care service organizations or individuals (‘hosts’), including hospitals, physician clinics, payors, pharma companies, and nursing associations. NYCEDC will fund approximately 10 innovative NYC-based pilot projects with up to $100,000 each. That funding is equity free and acts like a milestone based grant that can be split between the ‘host’ and the ‘innovator’ as they see fit.

And the best part – the program will help facilitate connections between ‘innovators’ and ‘hosts’ via matchmaking events to promote formation of partnerships. For most startups, that eliminates months (if not years) of cold-calling and precious business development resources.

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