The contest pitted more than 200 app developers in a bid to “start a revolution” by designing new mobile applications that will integrate directly into the Chicago-based company’s electronic health records software. The 15 winners announced Monday at the 2013 HIMSS Conference and Exhibition will each receive $150,000, and will move on to compete for a $250,000 prize for the app that demonstrates the most positive clinical, financial or performance improvement results after being deployed to a test site.
“Our Open App Challenge award recipients, and all of the participants, are well on the way to improving healthcare,” said Paul M. Black, president and chief executive officer of Allscripts, in a press release issued shortly after the finalists were announced at the Allscripts booth in the Exhibit Hall. “By combining Allscripts open architecture with their innovative problem-solving ideas, these participants are making open a reality.”
The winners are:
- eDoc4u, which helps chronically ill patients manage their health by providing personalized, automated follow-up programs.
- ePREOP, a preoperative screening tool that is designed to prevent delays, cancellations and unnecessary testing, thereby improving postoperative outcomes and increase patient satisfaction.
- Galen, whose eCalcs app brings traditional health calculators, such as the Framingham Risk Score, into the EHR, enabling a patient’s chart information to be automatically populated and a calculator to add the score to the chart.
- Genelex helps providers check for drug and gene interactions not covered by e-prescribing or EHR software interaction checks. The app enables providers to check a patient’s drug regimen and prevent adverse drug events.
- Mana Health, whose diagnostic decision support engine collects patient data and suggests testing needs and diagnoses. The app is designed to encode large amounts of diagnoses and help clinicians reach the correct diagnosis faster.
- Medefile provides an electronic personal health record and offers the service of collecting, digitizing, indexing and storing all of the patient’s data.
- Moxe Health generates tasks and notes automatically from patient calls, improving the always-tricky provider documentation process.
- PATHway’s mobile solution addresses risk factors for diabetes patients and enables providers to monitor progress and engage at-risk patients.
- Sense.ly’s virtual nurse app is equipped with remote diagnostic tools that enable the assessment of a patient’s condition and suggest follow-up actions.
- Shareable Ink’s digital pen allows providers to document directly into the EHR, and patients to fill out medical history or consent forms.
- Smart Sign Out’s app is designed to improve the way doctors communicate about patients and the efficiency and accuracy of handoffs through technology that can be accessed on any device.
- Spaulding Clinical, whose app diagnoses high-risk cardiac patients and empowers providers to enhance patient engagement through remote monitoring.
- Treat’em, which offers a private, secure social network for patients to interact with providers and fellow users, while keeping medical data confidential.
- VAL9000, which offers hands-free audio access to medical records from a providers’ phone.
- Windward, whose mobile solution addresses risk factors for lung disease patients and enables providers to monitor progress and engage patients at risk.
The apps were judged by a panel of medical executives and groups into two categories: apps that improve management of high-cost chronic diseases and innovative approaches to addressing value-based care. In the next round, contestants must demonstrate integration with Allscripts’ Sunrise Clinical Manager, Enterprise Electronic Health Record or Professional EHR.
“As a practicing physician and CMIO, I appreciate the importance of EHRs built on open architecture,” said Lennox Hoyte, MSEECS, chief medical information officer of the University of South Florida Physicians Group, and one of the Phase 1 judges, in the press release. “By enabling its EHRs to connect to outside systems and encouraging developers to create the apps to do so, Allscripts is working to transform healthcare for the better.”
Second round entries are due by July 14, and winners will be named at the Allscripts Client Experience event on Aug. 21-23 in Chicago.