Heritage Provider Network, UCLA and Open mHealth announce the launch of $100,000 mobile apps health prize challenge

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Heritage Provider Network, Inc., The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and Open mHealth today announced the launch of a $100,000 mobile apps health prize challenge.

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The Heritage Open mHealth challenge will encourage teams to create mobile applications using the Open mHealth architecture. The use of an open architecture overcomes inherent limitations created by dissimilar mobile health applications that cannot communicate with one another. Applications created in conformance with an open architecture will increase the diversity and utility of personalized health information available to improve chronic disease management, both through better patient self-monitoring and better clinical decision making.

"I'm very proud to sponsor this prize with UCLA and Open mHealth," said Dr. Richard Merkin, President and CEO of Heritage. "Currently, there are thousands of mobile apps and web applications for a variety of medical conditions but none that work together cohesively," continued Dr. Merkin. "For patients with multiple chronic conditions it is extremely difficult for them to monitor and track those conditions on separate applications. Allowing the tracking of their conditions in real time will lead to better health outcomes and lower cost of care."

"We have worked for years to promote an open architecture in mobile health," said Prof. Deborah Estrin, Co-Founder of Open mHealth. "The inability of diverse mobile applications to be integrated with one another to serve particular patient needs has greatly hampered the progress in patient-centered disease management. This challenge should go a long way toward advancing the cause of an open architecture."

UCLA's involvement stems from its dedication to health care research, mobile health, and a new platform called Ohmage MWF created at UCLA. "We are at an incredible time in the history of medicine. Combining technology with new understandings of disease and human behavior affords us a wonderful opportunity. The Heritage Open mHealth challenge has the potential to be a real game changer," said David Feinberg, the CEO of the UCLA Health System.

"In bringing mobility together with Open mHealth's open architecture, the contest is exciting on multiple smart healthcare IT fronts," said Jim Davis, UCLA's Vice Provost for Information Technology and Chief Academic Technology Officer. "It will produce mobile applications that address new models of meaningful, self-delivered health care; it will show how open architecture and mobility combine to open untapped heath care insights; and it will demonstrate how an open architecture facilitates a broad base of innovation."

The challenge will run for approximately four months, and the submissions will be judged by a distinguished panel of judges that, in addition to Prof. Estrin, Dr. Feinberg, and Dr. Merkin, includes Aneesh Chopra, former Chief Technology Officer of the United States, Karen Ignani, President and CEO of AHIP, Dr. Mark McClellan, Director of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution, Dr. Mark Smith, President and CEO of the California Healthcare Foundation, and Anne Wojcicki, Co-Founder of 23andMe, Inc.

The challenge website is located at http://heritagechallenge.openmhealth.org/.

ABOUT HPN:

Heritage Provider Network, Inc. (HPN) is on the cutting edge of the accountable care model of healthcare delivery: coordinated, patient-doctor centric, integrated health care systems that represent the future of health care in the United States. HPN is dedicated to quality, affordable health care and putting patients' wellness first. The collaborative mobile apps prize is one of a number of competitions HPN is sponsoring in its ongoing efforts to spur innovations in healthcare, including the $3million Heritage Health Prize Competition, and the Institute of Medicine's Go Viral for Health Prize. HPN is also in the process of launching a number of other health related prizes. (www.heritageprovidernetwork.com)

About Open mHealth

Open mHealth is non-profit startup building open software architecture to break down the barriers in mobile health to integration among mHealth solutions and unlock the potential for mHealth. Through a shared set of open APIs, both open and proprietary software modules, applications and data can be "mixed and matched," and more meaningful insights derived through reusable data processing and visualization modules. Enhanced integration at both module and application levels allows products to be more nimbly adapted and customized to maximize potential impact. Through an open community, we are working together to build more effective mhealth solutions, drive innovation in healthcare evaluation, and transform healthcare for all. Open mHealth is funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (http://openmhealth.org/)

About UCLA

UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of more than 40,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 337 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and six faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize. (http://www.ucla.edu/)

SOURCE Heritage Provider Network, Inc.