Submissions End In $3 Million Heritage Health Prize Challenge

MARINA DEL REY, Calif., April 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Heritage Provider Network (HPN) today announced the end of submissions in its two-year, $3 million Heritage Health Prize competition, the largest predictive modeling competition of its kind. The winner of the competition will be announced by HPN at the Health Datapalooza Forum in Washington, DC in June 2013. (www.heritagehealthprize.com)

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The competition, which attracted more than 39,000 entries worldwide, provided contestants with de-identified medical record data and challenged them to create a breakthrough algorithm that can predict how many days a patient will spend in the hospital. The goal of the prize is to develop solutions that will decrease the number of avoidable hospitalizations in the United States, which collectively cost Americans more than $30 billion annually.

"The Heritage Health Prize challenge has gathered the world's brightest minds together to develop inventive solutions to our nation's growing $3trillion healthcare crisis," said Dr. Richard Merkin, president and CEO of HPN. "The insights and collaborations that have emerged from this competition are just the beginning.  It has been a promising step forward in creating a model that will help achieve tomorrow's breakthroughs in health care coordination."

"During the coming weeks, the judges in the contest will work to confirm the winning algorithm," said Anthony Goldbloom, founder and chief executive officer at Kaggle, the company running the prize. "The activity on the leaderboard has been inspiring, keeping the healthcare conversation vital." (www.kaggle.com)

Additionally, on April 8, 2013, all but the top 10 places on the private leaderboard will be revealed.

The Heritage Health Prize is one of a number of competitions Dr. Merkin is sponsoring in HPN's ongoing efforts to spur innovations that improve quality and reduce inefficiencies in healthcare.  HPN is also sponsoring the $100,000 mobile apps Heritage Open mHealth Challenge with the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and Open mHealth (http://heritagechallenge.openmhealth.org)

Then, on April 16, 2013, HPN will announce the beginning of the Care Transformation Prize Series, with The Advisory Board and The BiPartisan Policy Center. The goal of the prize series is to challenge data scientists to use big data to solve healthcare problems submitted by the public, with the goal of sharing the solutions with the community.

"Every day we work with our members to provide high quality, coordinated and cost effective care for our patients. Our prize contests are just one way we are addressing systemic issues in care management and developing new solutions to solve the big challenges in health care," said Dr. Merkin. 

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 and its affiliates operates in California, New York and Arizona providing high quality, cost effective healthcare to over 700,000 individuals and is dedicated to quality, affordable health care, putting patients' wellness first. (www.heritageprovidernetwork.com)

SOURCE Heritage Provider Network, Inc.