Dive Brief:
- HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has announced the Phase 2 winners of the Consumer Health Data Aggregator Challenge and the Provider User Experience Challenge.
- The two contests are aimed at facilitating access to and exchange of electronic health information.
- Former National Coordinator for Health IT Karen DeSalvo launched both contests at the HIMSS annual conference in March 2016, and Phase 1 winners were revealed in July.
Dive Insight:
The competitions reflect a broader effort to help consumers and clinicians benefit from digital health services, including a proposed rule last year to strengthen reviews, oversight, transparency, and accountability for health IT products.
Consumer challenge applicants were asked to come up with a solution that enables them to access and securely integrate health data from different providers using a variety of health IT systems. The provider challenge focused on showing how data made accessible to apps through application programming interfaces can enhance providers’ use of electronic medical records by improving workflow efficiency. In both cases, applicants had to use Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and open APIs, both advocated by ONC.
PatientLink Enterprises snagged first place in the consumer challenge, winning $50,000 for its cloud-based MyLinks app. The app eases gathering, managing and sharing of patient data using several methods, including FHIR and direct messaging. Users can also participate in research, monitor data from remote devices, and use interactive tools.
The $50,000 first prize in the provider challenge was won by Herald Health for a solution that lets clinicians manage the overload of alerts and information by creating customized push notifications.
In addition, a collaborative effort by University of Utah Health Care, Intermountain Healthcare and Duke Health took the $25,000 second place and “connector” prizes. They came up with a clinical decision support tool that makes treatment recommendations for babies who are jaundiced at birth based on liver waste product levels detected in their blood.