The Health Data Consortium and Luminary Labs Join Forces to Create a Public Resource to Accelerate Healthcare Innovation

NEW YORK, Sept. 10, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Health Data Consortium and Luminary Labs have joined forces to accelerate the transformation of health and healthcare with the launch of HealthDataChallenges.com. HealthDataChallenges.com is a public good, a hub for innovation in health and healthcare, and is home to the widest-reaching database of health data challenges sourced from around the web.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130910/NY77074LOGO)

Sara Holoubek, CEO of Luminary Labs, states, "Numerous organizations across the country are spurring innovation in health and healthcare through challenges, competitions, and hackathons. We aim to unite these efforts so that developers, designers, data scientists, patients, researchers, practitioners, and the general public have access to the most comprehensive set of competitions. Creating an ecosystem of solvers committed to transforming health and healthcare is not only possible, but desperately needed."

The site is also home to The Health Data Challenge Series, a formal program from the Health Data Consortium that offers sponsoring organizations the opportunity to accelerate innovation, identify new partners, and catalyze new company formation. The Health Data Challenge Series will apply the best practices of the leading tech accelerators and incubators, allowing innovators to advance their solutions through mentorship, access to industry, and non-dilutive capital while maintaining all intellectual property.

The first challenge in the series, the Sanofi US 2013 Data Design Diabetes Innovation Challenge, concluded in June and awarded $100,000 to Connect & Coach, the first hybrid clinical and consumer application for Registered Dietitians and Certified Diabetes Educators to help educate the diabetes community.

"We see it as a win-win-win across the board: a win for the healthcare system, a win for the organization sponsoring the challenge, and a win for the innovators themselves that have the opportunity to apply their brilliance in new and highly relevant ways," said Dwayne Spradlin, CEO of the Health Data Consortium.

The second challenge in the series, The Merck | Heritage Provider Network Innovation Challenge, will kick off later this fall and will focus on improving adherence to care plans in order to generate better outcomes for people living with chronic disease.

For more information, please visit HealthDataChallenges.com, or follow along on Twitter (@hdchallenges) and Facebook (facebook.com/healthdatachallenges).

SOURCE Luminary Labs