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An Open Call for the PCORI Matchmaking App Challenge

By via The Health 2.0 Network

PCORI is pleased to announce the PCORI Matchmaking App Challenge. This initiative seeks to create research partnerships that allow innovators and patients to work together. Developers are invited to make a full functioning, ready-to-publish app that has the capability to connect patients with researchers.

The Initiative

We are inviting developers to create an app that brings together patients, stakeholders, or researchers, and move toward collaborative research. These apps must integrate with already established research networks, and preferably integrates social media and robust user profiles. The developer is also encouraged to include an advanced search option and customizable displays.

Reviewers will include technology experts, PCORI staff members, and members of PCORI’s multi-stakeholder Advisory Panels. Reviewers will consider how well each developer facilitates connections that allow equal access to people from different backgrounds and with varying health interests and research experience, as well as considering creativity and the past experience of the developers.

The rewards are substantial, with PCORI awarding first place with $100,000, second place with $35,000, and third place will take home $15,000.

How to Apply

To enter your team for the Challenge, please go to the pre-registration form.

PCORI and Health 2.0 will host an hour-long informational webinar on Wednesday, April 30, at 1 p.m. (ET) to present the challenge goals and guidelines. We will describe the motivation behind and purpose of the Matchmaking App Challenge; explain the submission guidelines, judging criteria, and other conditions of the challenge; and answer questions from potential applicants. Registration for the webinar is now open. Questions and answers will be posted after the event.

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‘Reducing Cancer Among Women of Color’ App Challenge

By J. Nadine Gracia, MD

Photograph Dr. J. Nadine Gracia is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health (Acting) Calling all software developers, entrepreneurs, and innovators – the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) seeks your help in empowering women in minority and underserved communities to fight and prevent cancer.

Each year, more than 300,000 new cases of breast, cervical, uterine, and ovarian cancer are diagnosed in the United States. While these diseases touch every community, disparities in education, prevention, early treatment, quality of care, and access to support mean that minority and underserved women bear a disproportionate burden.

In the face of these disparities, HHS has launched a new challenge to help turn the tide: the “Reducing Cancer among Women of Color” App Challenge. The challenge invites developers to create an application (app) for mobile devices that can help improve the prevention and treatment of breast, cervical, uterine, and ovarian cancer. Up to $100,000 will be awarded for apps that provide high-quality health information to women and community health workers, interface securely with patient health records, and strengthen communication across provider care teams.

This month, as we reaffirm our commitment to promoting prevention and fighting cancer in recognition of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we are turning to new platforms and new approaches in our effort to address cancer disparities. We are reaching consumers where they are – recognizing that minorities rely heavily on mobile devices for accessing information. We are turning to new technology, and sourcing solutions directly from those who understand it best. And we are raising awareness about health equity among new audiences – including those who are already dedicated to thinking innovatively about solutions for tough challenges.

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Winners of the Patient Safety Reporting System Challenge

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By Adam Wong

Over the past several weeks, many of us at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and Food and Drug Administration have been evaluating the submissions for the Reporting Patient Safety Events Challenge. Team 90, consisting of KBCore (created by CRG Medical, Inc.) and iHealthExchange, was selected the winner of the challenge—and the recipient of the $50,000 prize—because the company’s patient safety reporting system best fit the criteria of the challenge to find and reduce the risks associated with patient care. Right now, finding risks through the reporting of adverse events is slow because paper-based systems may be hard to read and require transmission by fax machines. By modernizing the patient safety reporting system through the use of computer-based applications we can better shed light on medical errors and augment the discovery of new patient safety hazards more timely and efficiently.

Reporting Patient Safety Events Challenge Submissions

The Challenge submissions were evaluated on a variety of criteria to determine which would potentially improve reporting of adverse events the most. The applications were required to make it easier to file an adverse event report using AHRQ’s Common Formats while allowing for:

  • The inclusion of additional information during the initial submission and from a follow-up investigation;
  • Import of relevant electronic health record or personal health record information, including screenshots; and
  • Ability  to submit reports to various entities including PSOs, FDA, and other health oversight organizations.

IDinc and Shands Healthcare finished in second place, while third place went to MidasPlus. They will receive $15,000 and $5,000, respectively.

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Palo Alto Medical’s Innovation Center Announces Seed Funding for Accelerator Program

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By Hemali Thakkar

Through the linkAges™ Developer Challenge and Accelerator Project, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s (PAMF) David Druker Center for Health Systems Innovation (IC) is inviting teams to create innovative solutions to help seniors age successfully.

First place winners of the three-month Developer Challenge will not only win $5,000,
but also will be invited to join the PAMF Innovation Center Accelerator, a six-month
incubator designed to refine and integrate the winning solution into the linkAges
ecosystem for rapid implementation within the PAMF community. Second and third
place winners will receive $3,000 and $2,000, respectively.

The IC is excited to make two announcements of importance of its Developer Challenge
initiative, being run in partnership with Health 2.0:

First, the IC is pleased to announce that seed funding is available and aimed at
supporting daily team activities through the 6-month accelerator phase. The winning
team can now focus on developments and delivering results. The level of funding
will be subject to negotiation, and will be made available by an investment in the IP
created by the team.

Second, the IC is excited to announce a partnership with HP Cloud from Hewlett
Packard. By way of sponsorship, participants signed up for this Challenge can gain
free access to the HP Cloud services/technical support as well as access to HP
Cloud Compute, HP Cloud Object Storage, HP Cloud Block Storage, HP Cloud
CDN. These allow the custom build of virtual servers, define access settings to local
and remote services, and create and store data in the cloud.

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The first Sex::Tech hackathon

I’m on the board of ISIS, a wonderful organization led by the irrepressible  Deb Levine, that helps deal head on with issues of youth sexuality, mediated by technology. The annual conference is in three weeks, and there’s a hackathon the day before — Matthew Holt

ISIS is hosting our first ever hack-a-thon, together with our partners TechSoup. A hack-a-thon is a live event bringing together developers, designers, innovators and entrepreneurs to build exciting new apps and tools, in this case to improve young people’s health and wellness.

Theme: The Unmentionables

This short and focused event – 1 day only – will result in the rapid development of interesting concepts and working prototypes that will be developed further by the participating teams back at their desks and at future hack-a-thon events, with ISIS and TechSoup as partners for future product development and distribution.

Challenge: Design an app to solve the challenge of providing honest, real-time, private data from youth and young adults about “unmentionable” activities, like sexual behavior, substance use, sadness, and relationship drama to researchers and program experts who work with youth.

Date: March 31st, 2012Continue reading…

Health 2.0 Code-a-thon: Novartis invites all-comers to innovate around their API

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By DAVE CHASE

As Health Innovation Week kicks off, before 1300 of our best friends arrive for the Health 2.0 Conference on Sunday-Tuesday, on Saturday we are hosting a Health 2.0 Code-a-thon in San Francisco at the PariSOMA loft (11am  Saturday 25th to 3pm Sunday 26th). Spots are filling up fast but you can register here & yes, it’s free and there’s $10,000 in prizes at stake (not to mention pizza & beer). But it’s not just SiliValley techies who care. Big pharma Novartis is getting into challenges big time including sponsoring one at this very code-a-thon. THCB favorite (and CEO of Avado) Dave Chase explains more–Matthew Holt

“We’ve spent billions developing new drugs and we’ve spent billions marketing drugs but we’ve spent nothing on the actual use of our drugs.” That is how a senior executive at a major pharmaceutical company described the model in which they’ve operated historically. In a “do more, bill more” reimbursement environment, there was little economic incentive for a pharmaceutical company to pay close attention to what was happening with patients in clinical practice. This has been in stark contrast with clinical trials where a trial makes or breaks a drug. For obvious reasons, in clinical trials, there is a tremendous amount of attention paid to what happens with an individual’s use of a drug.

Times have changed. Not only have the first warning shots been fired across the bow of the pharmaceutical industry, the first shots have landed. Whether the payer is a national government or private insurance company, increasingly, they are refusing to pay for drugs that haven’t demonstrated efficacy in clinical practice (not just trials).

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ONC and NCI Partner to Launch Exciting New Challenge

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By Jean-Luc Neptune, Health 2.0 Developer Challenge

Health 2.0, in conjunction with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), is excited to launch a new innovation competition sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI): “Using Public Data for Cancer Prevention and Control: From Innovation to Impact.”

This highly innovative effort is presented as part of the ONC’s Investing in Innovations (“i2”) Initiative, and is being managed by Health 2.0 through the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge program. Teams are asked to develop an application that has the potential to integrate with existing health information technology platforms and addresses targets at one or more points on the cancer control continuum, using public data that are relevant to cancer prevention and control.

Teams are required to address challenges faced by consumers, clinicians, or researchers on the continuum of cancer control. Suggested targets include promoting healthy behaviors (e.g., nutrition, physical activity, smoking cessation), early detection and screening, informed decision-making, and adherence to treatment plans.

This is a two-phase challenge. Submissions for Phase I are due August 26, 2011, and will be judged on their use of cancer-related data, as well as potential for impact, innovation, and usability. Finalists from Phase I will receive a $10,000 award at a major health IT conference in September 2011. In Phase II, up to two winning teams from the slate of finalists will each receive a $20,000 award at an international system sciences conference in January 2012.

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Getting More Startups Focused on Health

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By MISSY KRASNER

Could it be true? Is venture funding on the mend after it’s collapse in 2008? Some would say that the amount of capital invested is on the rise, and new funding streams are providing an excellent opportunity for startups to start getting funded again. But is this also true for health or healthcare startups?  After leaving Google recently, I have been spending time talking to various startups and VC firms that are interested in health and healthcare apps. I am encouraged by what I see.

There seems to be a handful of seed accelerators and government initiatives focused on stimulating innovation in the consumer and provider health tech space. New incubators like Rock Health and Startup Health, an arm of the Startup America Partnership are trying to encourage attention to this vertical. Other cool platforms such as the Quantified Self movement, ONC’s Investing in Innovations (i2) Initiative, and this week’s impending announcement of the SMArt (Substitutable Medical Apps, Reusable Technologies) Challenge Apps are creating some fresh buzz.  But what I find even more interesting is that broader tech accelerators like YCombinator, and 500 Startups are also starting to fund some health startups (checkout drchrono.com and Evoz).

While I am making my rounds, I cannot help but make a shameless plug for some of my ex Googler friends at 500 Startups. In case you have not heard of them yet, 500 Startups is a $40 million Super Angel investment fund that was founded by former PayPal executive, Dave McClure and Christine Tsai, former Google Marketing pro who ran Google I/O.  They provide early-stage seed funding ($10K to $250K) and have over 140 experienced startup mentors around the world that help with product design and data and customer acquisition. 500 Startups holds a series of events on all kinds of things relating to startup success. In fact, check out the event they are hosting this Saturday, June 25th from 1-6pm called “‘Design a Healthy Startup: Prevent Burn Out.” This event will feature 500 Startup founders and entrepreneurs from HealthTap, EcoFactor, Google, Facebook and Zynga. Demos from cool new startups in the wellness space like Dojo, Habit Labs, and FitSquid, will also be presenting. Read more about the event or sign up to attend this Saturday.

Missy Krasner spent several years helping getting Google Health off the ground, and before that was David Brailer’s right-hand woman at ONC.

RWJF’s Stephen Downs on a New Model for the Foundation – and the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge

Last week, we sat down with Steve Downs, Assistant Vice President, Health Group, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to discuss the 3 New Challenges they’ve announced for the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge. Steve explains RWJF’s current areas of focus in health and how they are testing the Developer Challenge as a novel process to source and spur innovation.

Interview with Steve Downs, RWJF

From building real apps based on the Project Health Design PHR prototypes (in partnership with CHCF) to using County Health Rankings to build interactive tools for decision-making (in partnership with U. of Wisconsin) to working with the Markle Foundation and VA/CMS on the Blue Button initiative, RWJF has given the Health 2.0 innovator community lots of raw material and inspiration to work with.

And within just a couple of days, 5 Teams have already signed up to compete.  For more on RWJF’sChallenges and to get involved with the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge, go to www.health2challenge.org.