Dive Brief:
- HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has revealed the Phase 1 winners of two app challenges - the Consumer Health Data Aggregator Challenge and the Provider User Experience Challenge.
- Both challenges, announced by the National Coordinator for Health IT Karen DeSalvo in March at the HIMSS annual conference, are aimed at improving consumer and provider use of and access to electronic health information.
- The winners will move onto Phase 2, during which all apps will undergo an evaluation.
Dive Insight:
The ONC's efforts fall into a larger movement for helping both clinicians and consumers benefit from digital health services, including a rule proposed in March to address the reviewing, overseeing and increasing transparency and accountability for health IT products.
Applicants were required to use the Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR), which is an interoperability standard for electronically exchanging health data, and open application programming interfaces (APIs). For Phase 1, they had to submit their business plans, designs and propose partnerships with providers and/or EHR vendors to test the apps.
Submissions for Phase 2 are due November 7 and it is open to all applications, not just those who participated in Phase 1. Winners could receive a grand prize, a second place prize, and an "Ultimate Connector" prize with a total value of $100,000, according to the press release.
The Phase 1 winners of the Consumer Health Data Aggregator Challenge are Green Circle Health's The Green Circle platform, HealthCentrix's Prevvy Family Health Assistant app, Medyear’s mobile app, and MetroStar Systems' Locket app.
The Provider User Experience Challenge Phase 1 winners are Herald Health, PHRASE Health, University of Utah Health Care/Intermountain Healthcare/Duke Health System, and WellSheet. In order to win a $50,000 award in Phase 2 of the Provider User Experience Challenge applications must present an API that can make clinical workflows in EHRs more clinical specialty-specific, intuitive, and actionable.