Lowell General Hospital, a community hospital near Boston, and ClinicalBox, are poised to go full blast into care coordination.

The team is one of six winners of a nationwide Innovation Challenge, sponsored by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

"Time is of the essence," Cece Lynch, Lowell General Hospital's chief nurse executive and vice president of patient care services, said in press statement. "Our nurses work day in and day out to deliver excellent care for our patients. Our goal with this innovation collaboration is to make their important work with patients easier and even more impactful."

Lowell General will apply ClinicalBox's software solutions to care coordination and patient engagement during surgical episodes of care.

"As Lowell General Hospital looks to establish the Perioperative Surgical Home we believe strongly that this innovation collaboration with ClinicalBox will help us to rapidly realize that vision," Harohalli Vijayakumar, Lowell General Hospital's chief of anesthesiology, said in a news release.

"We are always looking for ways to drive excellence into our operations and see this as an opportunity to drive towards nuanced and intelligent standardization," Lynch added.

Lowell General Hospital and Circle Health have put care coordination and patient engagement at the center with Complete connected care as its organizational promise. "Lowell General Hospital has a history of being forward thinking. All of our investments in our facilities, staff and technology have positioned us for the future," Lynch said.

"Fast decision-making, a thirst for driving innovation at the community-level, and a goal to make significant progress on the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's Triple Aim, all influenced our decision to collaborate with Lowell General Hospital," added Hagigi.

"The ClinicalBox team believes that the right software can power the value-based healthcare system of the future," said ClinicalBox's CEO, Farbod Hagigi, in a news release. "Our coherent approach to care coordination, digital engagement, and the integration of wearable sensors, ensures an excellent patient experience, improved outcomes and predictable costs."

ClinicalBox, a Boston-based healthcare technology company develops software for care coordination, patient engagement, and performance analytics across the surgical care continuum.

"We designed ClinicalBox's solutions to be intuitive and fast to use from day one," said Salim Afshar, MD, "Every minute of a surgical care team's time is precious, which is especially true for patients receiving life changing surgery."

Afshar, a practicing surgeon, is a ClinicalBox co-founder and its chief medical advisor.

The six winners of the ONC Innovation Challenge were selected from among 78 host-innovator teams from across the country. At the start, almost 500 organizations expressed interest in finding partners through the matchmaking program. More than 300 in-person meetings were held in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York City.

The other five winning teams, announced last May, are:

• CreateIT Healthcare Solutions and MHP Salud
• Gecko Health Innovations and Boston Children's Hospital
• Optima Integrated Health and University of California, San Francisco, Cardiology Division
• physIQ and Henry Ford Health System
• Vital Care Telehealth Services and Dominican Sisters Family Health Service