ChallengePost

Update

Congratulations to the winners of the Ensuring Safe Transitions from Hospital to Home Challenge! Axial Transition Suite, iBlueButton, and VoIDSPAN were the top submitted solutions, and were awarded prizes of $25,000, $10,000, and $5000, respectively.  Axial Transition Suite and iBlueButton also demonstrated their solutions at the CMS QualityNet Conference.

 

Axial Transition Suite – submitted by Matt Maddox and Joanne Rohde of Axial Exchange – is a web-based application that enables information to flow to a patient’s next care setting so that providers have what they need, when they need it, and to engage patients with the information and tools needed to improve their health knowledge and enhance their ownership of after-care responsibilities; it focuses on bridging care-transition gaps between first-responders and hospitals and then at the time of discharge.

 

The iBlueButton application – submitted by Bettina Experton, Chris Burrow, Randy Ullrich, Philippe Faurie, and Nina Hein of Humetrix – provides patients and caregivers with immediate access to critical personal health information at home and at the point of care.  It’s an intuitive mobile app (for mobile phones and tablet computers) that offers automated and secure access, anywhere and anytime, to online health records, discharge instructions, and additional resources; it also allows patients to easily push records from their device to their provider’s.

 

VoIDSPAN – submitted by Andreas Kogelnik and Kenneth Ng of Flexis – integrates voice, SMS/text, and web technologies into a mobile application designed to help target patients with a high risk of relapse and engage them in their care together with providers, case managers, and caretakers.  VoIDSPAN uses structured inpatient and outpatient data and data from local EHRs and health information exchanges, and integrates with other available community resources.



Posted 10 months ago by

About the Challenge



The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), in collaboration with the Partnership for Patients, seeks to stimulate innovative approaches to care transitions and improving patient safety by launching the ”Ensuring Safer Transitions from Hospital to Home Challenge.” The Partnership for Patients is a new nationwide public-private partnership launched by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to tackle all forms of harm to patients. Its aims include a 20% reduction in readmissions over a three year period and a 40% reduction in preventable hospital acquired conditions.

 

Nearly one in five patients discharged from a hospital will be readmitted within 30 days. A large proportion of readmissions can be prevented by improving communications and coordinating care before and after discharge. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provides a discharge checklist to help patients and their caregivers prepare to leave a hospital, nursing home, or other care setting. Research has shown that empowering patients and caregivers with information and tools to manage the next steps in their care more confidently is a very effective way to reduce errors, decrease complications, and prevent a return visit to the hospital.

 

ONC is challenging software developers to improve care transitions and build upon these tools by generating an intuitive and easy-to-use application to empower patients and caregivers that fits into existing ways that providers communicate. The ideal application will:

  1. Incorporate the content of the CMS Discharge Checklist
  2. Help patients and caregivers access the information and materials needed to answer the checklist’s questions about their condition, their medications and medical equipment, and their post-discharge plans
  3. Share this information with doctors, pharmacists, nurses and other professionals in their next care setting (e.g., home, nursing home, hospice)
  4. Identify community-based organizations or others who can provide valuable assistance
  5. Leverage and extend NwHIN standards and services including, but not limited to, transport (Direct, web services), content (Transitions of Care, CCD/CCR), and standardized vocabularies

 

Important dates

Submission Period:
Start: Sep 12, 2011 12:00 AM EDT End: Nov 17, 2011 12:00 AM EST
Winners announced:
Dec 15, 2011 12:00 PM EST

Closed

$40,000 in prizes

Created by

Logo for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology