An online portal connecting researchers with people willing to share their health data, a community health dashboard and a text-based counseling program for teens were the big winners of The Knight Foundation’s $2.2 million health data challenge.
Launched last summer, the challenge called on companies, nonprofits and individuals to submit ideas on how to turn large, publicly available datasets into useful information that informs health policy or helps consumers make better decisions.
The Knight Foundation teamed up with Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the California HealthCare Foundation to develop the challenge, and with the Clinton Foundation and the Health Data Consortium to pick the winners, which were announced Tuesday at the Clinton Health Matters conference.
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
The biggest winner was the Open Humans Network project, which was built on the idea that a critical mass of people will snowball health data sharing that will advance medical breakthroughs. It’s an online system that matches people willing to share their health data with researchers who would benefit from access to their information. PersonalGenomes.org took home $500,000 for the project.
Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, led by Dr. Jeffrey Benner, won $450,000 to build interactive dashboards that convey real-time data about the Camden community’s healthcare usage, costs and outcomes:
“The open source tool, built in partnership with data firm BlueLabs, will aggregate anonymous individual health and medical claims data, then display and map the results by demography and geography. Camden Coalition staff will work with local stakeholders, including hospital administrators, providers and policymakers, to ensure the data make Camden’s health care system more efficient and ultimately make patients healthier. The dashboard will make the tool available to other communities.”
$350,000 winners include DoSomething.org, which plans to scale its free Crisis Text Line for teens nationally, and Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, which will equip people with low-cost tools to track hazardous chemicals and detect contamination in their environment.
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
Code for America was awarded $210,000 for an open database that connects the public with information on health, human and social services near them. And to scale its data analysis tool to fight prescription drug abuse, SafeUseNow, BW Analytics Inc. won $208,000.
Finally, Solutions Journalism Network says reporters aren’t leveraging the public health data available to them because it’s hard to access and mine. So it’s collaborating with the Institute for Health Metrics and Ethics and newsrooms across the country to help journalists better report on communities that are making progress in public health.
Nearly 700 applications were submitted, according to The Knight Foundation. It also selected eight early-stage projects from the pool to receive funding through its Prototype Fund.
[Image credit: Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers]
