Introduction
Inspire others to be more engaged in their cancer care, using consumer e-health tools and other health IT. Create a video and tell us your story!
Keep things simple — each video should focus on a personal story of a cancer patient or survivor and how technology helped improve their care, and must encourage viewers to visit www.healthIT.gov to learn more.
To get started, check out these inspiring stories about the power of health IT to transform care, and review the requirements and ideas below. NOTE: these are professionally produced videos intended only as examples of compelling ways health IT changed lives.
Video Requirements
Please see the Official Rules for complete guidelines and requirements. Here is a summary of the key requirements:
- All submissions must be in English
- Videos must share a personal story about a treatment goal or transitional care planning process
- Videos must describe how health IT or consumer e-health tools are used to meet a goal related to cancer care
- All submissions must encourage people to visit www.HealthIT.gov for more information
- Videos should be concise and must be no longer than 2 minutes
- Participants may submit multiple videos
- Team members must be at least 18, but your video can include minors under 18 as long as the necessary consent forms are provided. (“Team members” do not include people who appear in the video but don’t make any other contributions to the submission.) For details on eligibility, review the Official Rules.
- All individuals who appear in the video (regardless of age) must complete and sign the Video Consent Form. If children under the age of 18 appear in the video, each child’s parent or guardian must fill out and sign the form. Signatures must be handwritten and scanned consent forms should be combined into one file and uploaded to the challenge site.
Restrictions
- The video cannot have been submitted previously in a promotion or contest of any kind, or previously exhibited or displayed publicly through any means.
- The video should not include any personal identification information about those in the video (e.g., name, address, social security number, etc.).
- The Video may mention a commercial business, industry name, brand name, product placement or other trademark only for the purpose of describing how information technology will be used to achieve your treatment goal. Videos that are overly promotional may be disqualified.
Videos that do not meet these requirements will not be eligible to enter the contest. The posting of videos is at the discretion of the Administrators; there is no guarantee that all submissions will be posted on the challenge website.
Making a Video
There are three steps to creating your video:
Step 1: Identify your story
Make it personal, relevant and realistic. Be genuine and share a personal story about a cancer care goal involving you or a friend or loved one. How was technology used to support meeting the goal?
Here are a couple of examples to help:
- One goal of my cancer treatment experience is for all the members of my health care team and my family to be on the same page so I can get the best care. I plan on using a personal health record to help manage all my health information from multiple providers in one place so the information is easily accessible to inform the other providers on my health care team about my care.
- I keep track of what is going on between my doctor visits using an app so that my doctors have all the information they need to provide me with the best care.
- I want to overcome my diagnosis of leukemia so I can live a long, healthy life and eventually have a family. After I was diagnosed with leukemia I used the Internet (www.cancer.gov) to find out more about my disease and treatment options. I learned that chemotherapy would make me infertile so I made plans to have my eggs frozen. Had I not done my homework I may not have known that was one of the side effects.
- I wanted my son to have a better understanding of his diagnosis so we played the game Re-mission together so he could learn about the disease and side effects. As a result of playing the game, he became more informed about his disease and we were able to talk more openly about how he was feeling.
Step 2: Learn about health IT.
Learn how information technology can be used to help achieve cancer treatment goals and support a transitional care planning process. You can share a story about health IT use to learn more about a diagnosis or treatment options, connect with other patients for support, improve collaboration with a doctor to coordinate care, determine the best treatment based on your or the patient’s preferences, help manage medications or diet, or other activities to enhance treatment. Don’t limit yourself to finding the perfect smartphone app (unless that fits your activity). Explore the world of health IT and e-health tools and see what’s available.
Health IT includes a broad array of technologies, such as remote monitoring devices, electronic health records (EHRs), personal health records (PHRs), e-prescribing, and personal e-health tools (health related web sites, mobile apps, online communities, email/text reminders and other software).
Your video should describe how information technology is used to support the treatment goal or transitional care planning process.
Step 3: Film it.
Your video will be judged on a variety of criteria, so you can make it stand out in different ways. The most important thing is to make it compelling, inspiring and instructive!
The quality and polish of your video is only one aspect of the competition. The best videos will tell a compelling story that inspires others and helps them make and achieve similar goals. You can use anything from a webcam to a Hollywood production company to make your video. When you’re finished filming and editing, upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo. Here are a few resources to help:
Use your webcam to record a video on YouTube
Digital video tips from O’Reilly Media
Video tutorials from MediaCollege.com
