Practice Fusion API Challenge kicked off

Practice Fusion, the free, web-based Electronic Health Record (EHR) company, kicked off the Practice Fusion API Challenge today as part of the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge, an initiative supported by the US Department of Health and Human Services. The challenge invites developers to connect patient health data from medical devices, mobile apps, social media systems and websites to doctors in real-time through Practice Fusion's new API.  With 43,000 medical providers and four million patients, the Practice Fusion platform is emerging as a key testing ground for innovations in participatory medicine.

"The API challenge is directly aligned with Practice Fusion's philosophy of unlocking data from the traditional paper chart," said Matthew Douglass, Vice President of Product Development at Practice Fusion. "This challenge enables an eager developer community to build low-cost, cutting-edge healthcare applications with technologies that have already transformed other sectors of our digital economy. Almost 200,000 Americans die each year from errors related to missing medical information, so even relatively small innovations around patient-reported data can deliver major health benefits."

Real-time access to health information from remote patient monitoring systems has the potential to reduce medical costs, enhance chronic disease management and improve overall quality of care. For example, a cardiologist could view real-time updates from a patient's Bluetooth-connected heart rate monitor in their online medical chart. A bariatric physician could monitor Lose It! calorie stats from the patient's iPhone; a psychiatrist could instantly track a patient's mood while they adjust to a new medication.

The winning development team will receive a $2,500 cash prize, tickets to Health Innovation Week events and an invitation to demo live at the Health 2.0 Conference, in San Francisco, October 7-8, 2010.  Using the bidirectional API, Practice Fusion challenges developers to:

• Help patients report health data directly to their doctors and their medical charts in real-time
• Give medical providers access to real-time patient-driven health data within their EHR system
• Build additional analysis, data visualization, alerts, patient education and health-improvement features utilizing the health data
• Be a visionary in the frontier of patient-driven health data, by giving medical providers the tools they need to track their patients' health when they are not in the exam room

Corporate, individual and academic development teams are welcome. Interested teams can review details of the Practice Fusion API challenge and enter to participate online.  The deadline for completed submissions is September 8, 2010 and the winner will be announced during Health 2.0.