Ever since the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs have been established, the adoption and implementation of EHR systems and other health IT products has been tremendous. The health IT sector in general has been expanding greatly over the last several years.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) reports that almost $700 million was invested in medical technologies during the first quarter of 2014, which shows an 87 percent growth when compared to the first quarter of 2013. Health IT products and mobile health applications are all leading the way in changing the way doctors and consumers interact across the healthcare continuum.
Nonetheless, ONC explains that even with the evident growth in the health IT sector, many startups are still challenged in acquiring pilot partners that will help develop their health IT systems and show that their product is effective for the industry. These pilot partners are necessary for acquiring the data needed to establish a health IT product as successful among potential investors and customers including healthcare systems, payers, and the patient community.
As such, ONC is looking to create stronger relationships to help innovators bring new health IT products to the market. ONC has announced a new challenge program: the Market Research and Development Pilot Challenge.
To participate in the challenge, health IT developers will need to work with host sites like hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, or laboratories to create pilot proposals. ONC will be offering $300,000 through a year-long commitment to truly develop new and revolutionary health IT products for the medical sector.
The funding will be distributed among six teams who will then initiate the pilot, collect a variety of data, evaluate the product, and distribute the results with ONC’s assistance. After six months, the teams will be expected to return an evaluation report about their findings. The very first steps to take, however, is to select the right team, create an overall plan, and prepare the pilot proposal.
For each team, ONC will first award $25,000 when the pilot teams are selected and then another $25,000 after the pilot development and evaluation period is completed. In addition to this challenge, ONC will also be initiating sessions around the nation to train the health IT startup community on federal regulations, privacy and security standards, payment reforms, and funding opportunities that will affect the outcome of their services or health IT products.
The forward push for increasing the number of health IT solutions among providers and medical systems leads a pathway toward sharing patient data quickly and efficiently across the healthcare continuum. The National Coordinator for Health IT Karen B. DeSalvo has spoken about the need for EHR interoperability and helped develop the ONC roadmap to reach this goal.
“We heard loudly and clearly that it was time to focus on interoperability as a priority and we articulated why the time is now to achieve the vision. First, as a nation, we have made significant progress in digitizing the care experience such that there is now data to be shared. Second, consumers increasingly expect and demand real-time access to their electronic health information,” DeSalvo stated. “Informed by your input and feedback we acted on this opportunity.”
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