Janssen Connected Care Challenge Finalists Announced

SAN DIEGO, April 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Janssen Healthcare Innovation, a team within Janssen Research & Development, LLC., (Janssen), announced the three finalists of the crowdsourcing-inspired Janssen Connected Care Challenge. The three finalists are being awarded $50,000 each to further develop their technology-enabled, scalable solutions to improve care for patients as they are discharged from the hospital. The challenge finalists each receive the prize money and mentorship while retaining independence and ownership of their business concept. The three finalists are:

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Cara Health
Team Leader: Enda Madden
Location: Chicago, IL
Cara Health's system with machine learning capabilities guides non-clinical staff through adaptive telephone conversations to identify patients at high risk of hospital readmission. Patient and caregiver self-reported health status information is used to predict pre-acute trends and generate alerts to facilitate early interventions.

Care Rocket
Team Leader: Wayne Monroe
Location: Bethesda, MD
The Care Rocket risk-assessment tool creates a portrait of the hospital patient within 24 hours of admission in order to design a patient-centric, post-discharge care plan. Patient use of the interactive voice response system supports engagement and adherence to in-hospital treatment and a customized, 30-day post-discharge care plan for optimal recovery.

Discharge Decision Support System: D2S2
Team Leader: Eric Heil
Location: Hillsborough, NJ
D2S2 is a proprietary discharge decision support system that assembles and scores key data upon admission to identify patients at risk for 30-day readmissions. The tool can help discharge planners and care coordinators quickly identify high-risk patients and facilitate the coordination of the right care for patients post-discharge.

"We received a tremendous number of high-quality submissions to our Janssen Connected Care Challenge and today are pleased to recognize those that were identified as having the highest potential to truly transform care transitions," said Diego Miralles, M.D., Head of Janssen Healthcare Innovation. "The current lack of effective coordinated care is a significant limitation of our healthcare system, increases the costs of our federal healthcare programs, and negatively impacts individuals' lives. Our three finalists proposed well-conceived, genuinely creative solutions designed to improve health outcomes and reduce costs as patients transition from the hospital to home."

Each finalist will present a prototype of their idea to a panel of distinguished judges at Demo Day, hosted by Janssen Healthcare Innovation Founding Partner Kimberly Park, on Thursday, May 10, 2012, at the Johnson & Johnson Global Strategic Design Office in New York City.

The judges for the challenge represent a diverse group of professionals who collectively have extensive knowledge of the difficulties associated with care transitions, as well as the complexities of transforming an innovative healthcare business idea into a reality. The Janssen Connected Care Challenge judges include:

• Leah Brown, A10 Clinical Solutions, Inc.
• Donald Casey, West Wireless Institute
• H. Edward Davidson, PharmD, MPH, Insight Therapeutics and Glennan Center for Geriatrics & Gerontology, Eastern Virginia Medical School
• Gianrico Farrugia, MD, Center of Innovation at Mayo Clinic
• Cheri Lattimer, RN, BSN, National Transitions of Care Coalition
• Bruce Leff, MD, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Hospital at Home Program
• Alyssa Lovegrove, New Venture Mentors
• Lisa Suennen, Psilos Group

A live broadcast of Demo Day will be available and archived on the Janssen Connected Care Challenge Web site. The final winner will be announced on May 23, 2012, and awarded $100,000 to help bring their concept to market.

Janssen Healthcare Innovation identified care transitions as an area in critical need of improvement. The challenge was announced earlier this year at the first ever Care Innovations Summit, a conference co-hosted by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation, The West Wireless Health Institute, and Health Affairs in collaboration with the Office of the National Coordinator at Health & Human Services. The team designed the Janssen Connected Care Challenge in order to rally entrepreneurs' best ideas. Janssen has collaborated with the National Transitions of Care Coalition (NTOCC) to design the evaluation criteria for the submissions as well as identify care transition and healthcare business experts to participate in the panel of judges. By working with outside experts, Janssen is able to tap a wider range of expertise, capabilities and resources to bring new advances and solutions in healthcare.

National Transitions of Care Coalition (NTOCC)
The National Transitions of Care Coalition is a 501(c)(4) dedicated to addressing a serious U.S. health care issue: filling the gaps that occur when patients leave one care setting and move to another care setting. These transitions include patients moving from primary care to specialty physicians; moving or transferring patients from the emergency department to intensive care or surgery; or when patients are discharged from the hospital to home, assisted living arrangements, or skilled nursing facilities. Working in conjunction with 450 Associate Member organizations and over 3,000 individual professional subscribers, NTOCC has developed tools and resources made available to everyone in the health care industry including providers, payors, patients and consumers. For more information, visit www.NTOCC.org.

Janssen Healthcare Innovation
Janssen Healthcare Innovation is an entrepreneurial team within Janssen Research & Development, LLC, (Janssen), one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies. Through collaborations, Janssen Healthcare Innovation is developing products and services to deliver high-quality, cost-effective healthcare to all. The team's current initiatives include solutions to address three emerging markets of healthcare: optimizing healthcare delivery, the maintenance of health, and innovative financing of healthcare. It also has projects that will enhance the company's existing business by improving patient adherence to treatment regimens, applying personal genomics to drug development, and modernizing clinical trials. For more information about the team and the Janssen Connected Care Challenge, go to: www.janssenhealthcareinnovation.com

SOURCE Janssen Research & Development, LLC