Q: Thus far, it seems these contests are mainly driven by federal agencies, so it was pretty interesting to see Novartis make the $100k award to Sensei. Looking ahead, do you anticipate more involvement from the private sector?
A: We see significant involvement from the private sector, not only from private commercial efforts, academic institutions and other not-for-profit entities. The America Competes Act allows offices within the department to partner with organizations in the private sector to engage in challenges. Certainly there are rules and requirements around that, but if it’s appropriate to do so, if it’s not an endorsement of that organization or their products and services, we have the ability to partner with them in the interest of developing healthcare innovations, ultimately to the betterment of health, healthcare and lower cost.

Q: Which of those should Government Health IT be tracking this year?
A: An initial effort we just launched earlier on within our office is partnering with the University of Maryland on a challenge they’re engaged with called Innovate for Healthcare. We’ll be seeking to work with academic institutions later on this year as well as state and local government. That’s listed on Challenge.gov. There’s about $30,000 in prizes that the University of Maryland put together.

Q: At the same time I have to wonder: How might private entities benefit from conducting these app contests?
A: As far as I understand, the entities within the private sector have embraced challenge efforts for a variety of reasons. One, of course, the solutions provided by the innovators. The opportunity to work with early-stage developers. Certainly there is a branding effort tied to this. But in a more important and direct sense I think the ability to focus existing commercial entities that have been around for years and make them more innovative, more embracing of ideas and concepts potentially foreign to the way they currently do business, is a very attractive and powerful concept. We see the challenges being developed and the solutions being provided as really game-changing for how the federal government engages the public in terms of identifying new ideas, new innovation. This really is a philosophy being embraced by the department and feeds up to President Obama’s innovation strategy. It took an act of Congress in order for us to be able to engage in these activities. True, it’s a small percentage compared to the breadth of activities the department currently works on. But for the small sliver of resources being dedicated to these efforts, I think we’re getting significant gains.

[See also: App challenge winners help fight against dating violence, abuse.]

Q: We hear about the winners, but what tends to become of the runners-up? Any success stories there?
A: For both the winners and the runners-up we’re still in the very early innings but let me share a few nuggets of information. First of all, for the winners and runners-up we’re trying to showcase their efforts on our website and Health 2.0 is working with our office to build a showcase portion to highlight some of the winners so the public can see who the top candidates were. That in itself will help to highlight the work that went into developing these innovations, and the innovators themselves. Additionally, the value of the process is not only in the prize. I’ll submit to you that the value of entering competition is the competition itself, being able to get your innovation to a point where it’s ready for judging, where you’re confident in giving it to a panel of external judges that actually test and evaluate that innovation. You want, "Congratulations, here’s your prize," but also "Here are the reasons why." That feedback gives the winner an opportunity to re-asses where they are, they can double down on the original concept, and it also gives them insight to refine, improve, re-develop for the next iteration. I think there is an implicit value of participating in any challenge effort, and that’s why we’re very happy to see wide fields of submission because they all ultimately benefit in some way from participation.

With regard to health IT, many of our programs are helping to support and really grow an emerging market, and you can really see that as the greatest catalyst for innovation in this space. That being said, the amount of money we’ve invested in building a nationwide infrastructure, in terms of supporting adoption, exchange, a growing workforce, are all going to add fuel to the innovation fires burning.

Q: I gather you’re talking about meaningful use, with NwHIN in there as well…
A: Yes, supporting exchange efforts, standards development, mobile device security and privacy issues. That’s increasing the level of transparency required to invest, to assume risk, and to engage in early-stage innovation. There’s hesitancy from those who develop, those who invest, and those who support new technologies that if you don’t see a very clear pathway to development and especially if they see perceived barriers – and if the federal government can help stakeholders understand what the risks are, at least from a policy perspective, it’s all positive for those who would develop and those who would adopt those technologies.