Six win ONC's inaugural Market R&D challenge
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) named six winners of its inaugural Market R&D Pilot Challenge, designed to help startups connect with healthcare organizations to evaluate their technologies in real-world care environments.
ONC awarded $300,000 to six innovator-host teams: ClinicalBox and Lowell General Hospital; CreateIT Healthcare Solutions and MHP Salud; Gecko Health Innovations and Boston Children’s Hospital; Optima Integrated Health and University of California, San Francisco; physIQ and Henry Ford Health System; and Vital Care Telehealth Services and Dominican Sisters Family Health Service. Seventy-eight host-innovator teams applied.
The challenge was designed to "break down the barriers between promising startups and healthcare stakeholders by helping early-stage health IT companies connect with healthcare organizations that would host pilot programs," according to Adam Wong, ONC management and policy analyst, writing on the agency's blog. "The innovative technologies developed by these companies are integral to improving consumer engagement and care coordination, which ultimately lead to greater demand for interoperability and health data liquidity."
The winners of the Market R&D Pilot Challenge will start live-testing in August new health IT apps in healthcare settings administered by their challenge hosts.
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.