Care4Today, a medication adherence app from Janssen Healthcare Innovation

The New York City Economic Development Corp. (NYCEDC), which promotes business investment in the city, is the latest to dangle cash prizes for innovation in digital health.

The contest, called Innovate Health Tech NYC and launched Monday, is offering a total $50,000 in award money and exhibition space to three winners for developing "commercially viable technologies that solve urgent healthcare problems," the organization says. NYCEDC, which is working with the San Francisco-based Health 2.0 organization on the challenge, will be looking for such things as mobile apps, wireless health monitors, tools for clinical workflow management and healthcare analytics software.

After the contest closes May 2, judges will pick a total of 10 finalists to receive assistance from health IT veterans to refine their product pitches in time for a public demonstration scheduled for July. Three winners will emerge from that group.

Sponsors include Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Healthcare Innovation, entrepreneurship academy StartUp Health and online technology competition platform ChallengePost.

"It's indicative of a trend we think is really inspiring," StartUp Health co-founder and partner Unity Stoakes tells MobiHealthNews, namely the many healthcare innovation challenges being run across the country. The hope is that winners will develop into sustainable companies that can have a real impact on healthcare in the U.S. and around the world, Stoakes says.

StartUp Health will be providing coaching, mentoring and support to the finalists and will be part of the review and selection process, according to Stoakes.

While sponsors have only committed to running Innovate Health Tech NYC contest once, there are plans to make it ongoing, Stoakes says. "It's a model that has worked well in New York," he says, citing the NYCEDC's NYC BigApps competition for creating useful mobile apps from city databases and, at the federal level, the Surgeon General's Healthy Apps Challenge.

This contest follows on the heels of the announcement last week of Pilot Health Tech NYC, also from the Economic Development Corp. and Health 2.0. That program will operate much like a business accelerator, providing $100,000 to each of 10 early-stage health IT companies for pilot programs to test technology prototypes in healthcare settings for a period of 3-6 months.

Organizers of the planned annual Pilot Health Tech NYC program are taking applications through Feb. 10 for "matchmaking" sessions with established healthcare service organizations. Matchmaking interviews will take place Feb. 20-21 and final proposals are due May 27.

StartUp Health and health incubator Blueprint Health are supporting Pilot Health Tech NYC.