Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute Announces $50,000 Innovation Challenge

Winning developers will receive cash awards for creating patient-researcher "matching" programs

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) today announced the PCORI Challenge, a competition to create a system for connecting healthcare researchers and patient partners to advance patient-centered comparative effectiveness research.

PCORI launched the challenge in collaboration with Health 2.0, a San Francisco-based company that promotes and showcases new technologies in health care through a series of conferences, code-a-thons, challenge competitions and more.

"This challenge offers an opportunity for innovators to help PCORI pursue our commitment to 'research done differently' by meaningfully bringing the voice of patients, caregivers and other stakeholders to the research process," said PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby, MD, MPH. "We believe such an approach will produce more meaningful research that improves outcomes that matter to patients."

PCORI's funding requirements require that patients and caregivers play a collaborative role throughout the research process, from helping to craft the questions to be studied through the dissemination of research results.

The PCORI Challenge seeks to support this approach by promoting development of a patient/researcher "matching" system that could effectively bring together potential partners interested in rigorous patient-centered outcomes research. The solution could be a well-articulated conceptual model, adaptation of an existing matching protocol, a prototype for new web-based service or app, or some combination of these approaches.

PCORI will award cash prizes to the winning developers in two categories: conceptual model ($10,000) and prototype ($40,000). A panel of judges, including researchers, technologists, patients and other stakeholders, will assess the entries. The submission period opens today and the deadline for entries is 11:59 p.m. ET, April 15, 2013. Winners will be announced at a major national health conference in spring 2013.

Interested developers can learn more and register to enter the challenge at www.pcori.org/challenge/.

About PCORI

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is an independent, non-profit organization authorized by Congress in 2010. Its mission is to fund research that will provide patients, their caregivers and clinicians with the evidence-based information needed to make better-informed health care decisions. PCORI is committed to continuously seeking input from a broad range of stakeholders to guide its work. More information is available at www.pcori.org.

About Health 2.0

Health 2.0 promotes and showcases new technologies in health care through a series of conferences, code-a-thons, challenge competitions and more. The Health 2.0 Conference is the leading showcase of cutting-edge technologies in health care, including Online Communities, Search and lightweight Tools for consumers to manage their health and connect to providers online. The Health 2.0 Developer Challenge is a series of prize competitions promoting health technology innovation. Health 2.0 also has its own media channels, Health 2.0 News and Health 2.0 TV; its own market intelligence service, Health 2.0 Advisors; and also sponsors the Health 2.0 Accelerator industry consortium. Health 2.0 was founded by Indu Subaiya & Matthew Holt in 2007 and is now a community of hundreds of organizations and thousands of innovators. For more information, see www.health2con.com.

SOURCE Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute