The American Medical Association has its eyes on mobile this season as it announced the three winners of its Interoperability and Innovation Challenge. This year the winners showcased technology that included a patient-provider communication tool, a personal risk analysis app, and a medical decision-making platform.
“The AMA issued the challenge to inspire the creation of novel mobile technology that demonstrates innovative uses of health data to support the long term wellness of patients,” Dr. Michael Hodgkins, the AMA’s chief medical information officer, said in a statement. “The top solutions chosen in the AMA Challenge have the potential to be transformational innovations that effectively share meaningful medical data between patients and physicians and create a healthier nation.”
The contest offered a total of $50,000 in Google Cloud credits (Google Cloud sponsored the event) that were shared between the three companies. In addition, all participants got $3,000 in Google Cloud credit for entering the contest.
This year the first place, $25,000 winner was HealthSteps, a Floridian company that offers a mobile health platform to help facilitate information sharing between the patient and provider. The app gives patients information about their next visit, alerts and notifications about their care plan, and a symptom tracker. Patients can download a QR code, which will give them information about their care. It also allows patients to send information from their wearables to their provider, which can then be integrated into patients' EHRs.
The platform is designed so that patients can send their clinical information to family members and caregivers in a HIPAA-compliant way.
Tel Aviv-based I-deal Health came in second place, scoring $15,000 in Google Cloud credits. This company's platform is designed to show patients what their personal risk is for various diseases, many of which are life threatening. Users can put in their information, and then the platform generates their risk factors and action plans to prevent certain outcomes. The tool also gives users a place to put in their clinical and lab measurements.
Lastly, Futureassure landed $10,000 in Google Cloud funding for its surgical platform that helps surgeons make clinical decisions. The tool, which is geared towards provider use, is able to automatically collect clinical and research frailty metrics in preoperative surgical patients. It then gives doctors a score on their frailty metrics.
A total of 36 entrepreneurs pitched their ideas to the organization. Of that 8 were selected to present in front of an audience at Google’s Cambridge, Mass. office, where the final three were selected.
The AMA has been exploring the world of digital health. In June the group outlined a new set of recommendations on augmented intelligence, a type of technology that aims to extend, but not replace, a human medical expert’s insight and decision-making capabilities.
“As technology continues to advance and evolve, we have a unique opportunity to ensure that augmented intelligence is used to benefit patients, physicians, and the broad health care community,” Dr. Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, a board member of the AMA, said in a statement at that time.
