Harvard Business School and Harvard Medical School has announce four finalists of the Health Acceleration Challenge. The selected finalists will share the $150k Cox Prize that includes an HBS case study written about their innovation and have the opportunity to present at the Forum on Health Care Innovation conference to 150 senior health care executives next April.
Health Acceleration Challenge Overview
The Health Acceleration Challenge is a “scale up” competition that focuses on compelling, already-implemented health care solutions and helps them to grow and increase their impact through powerful networking and funding opportunities.
Finalists
Here are the four finalists:
1. Bloodbuy – Keep the Blood Flowing
Blood is the core commodity of healthcare. It fuels the care delivery models of every major service line within our acute care facilities. Yet, the market structure for blood in the U.S. is severely fragmented and fraught with inefficiency. This gives rise to frequent spot shortages and massive price variations from region-to-region.
Bloodbuy’s cloud-based platform addresses the uneven geographic distribution of available blood supply in real-time, and enables price transparency by publishing cost averages and other key market indicators. Our web application facilitates enhanced interconnectivity and information exchange, which drive greater efficiency.
The result is systemwide cost savings, increased access and reduced waste.
2. I-Pass – High Reliability Communication for Better Patient Handoffs and Safer Care
The I-PASS Handoff Process is a multifaceted approach to improve the exchange of information among health care providers and has been associated with a 30% reduction in injuries due to medical errors in 9 hospitals. Medical professionals transmit vital information at every change of shift, and whenever a patient changes locations. In fact, communication errors have been found again to be the leading cause of serious adverse events in hospitals. The I-PASS Handoff Curriculum includes teamwork and communication training, simulations, a mnemonic to standardize handoffs, oral and written handoff improvements, faculty engagement tools, and an institution-wide sustainment campaign. Implementing I-PASS requires a transformational change effort.
3. Medalogix -Better quality of Life at the End of a Patient’s Life
4. Twine Health – Collaborative Care Platform – Empowering Patients through Apprenticeship
Patients are frustrated with receiving paternalistic orders and conforming to clinic schedules. Clinicians are overwhelmed trying to improve outcomes. Twine is a cloud-based collaborative care platform (iOS, Android, Web) that aligns patient and clinician values through the model of apprenticeship. Patients co-create plans with clinician coaches and receive virtual support that blends into their busy lives.The apprenticeship model has been validated through 6 years of research at the MIT Media Lab with unparalleled improvements in hypertension care: 3x better outcomes at ⅓ the cost. Twine is now live in 6 practices with even more impressive results. The goal for 2015 is to support the spectrum of chronic care in hundreds of practices.
