Experimental application to track patients' care experiences in real time wins REACH Developer Challenge

AcademyHealth today announced that an experimental application to track patients' care experiences in real time is the winner of the Relevant Evidence to Advance Care and Health (REACH) Developer Challenge. An international team of researchers including Deirdre McCaughey, Dominique LaRochelle, Aamer Ghaffer, Tejal Raichura, Shantanu Dholakia, Latoya Tatum, and Ashley Kimmel won first place with their project, Real-time Care Experience Feedback Using QR Codes.

The competition was part of the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge program and included a cash prize in addition to opportunities to work directly with AcademyHealth to further develop, vet and disseminate the winning product.

AcademyHealth, a nonprofit health policy and research organization, launched the REACH Challenge to foster collaboration between the research and developer communities, and to produce innovative applications that provide access to evidence-based information to support more meaningful engagement and real-time decision-making.

"The powerful combination of technology, social media, and data enable whole new ways of conceiving and conducting research," said AcademyHealth President and CEO, Dr. Lisa Simpson. "We launched the REACH Challenge to highlight the interdisciplinary nature of health services research, to encourage interactions between researchers and nontraditional partners, and to get people thinking about the many ways this kind of work might improve health and health care."

Submitted projects ranged from applications to help patients engage more fully in their care, to platforms that helped support caregivers and clinicians. The winning submission, Real-time Care Experience Feedback Using QR Codes, looked at ways that patients could provide feedback using their mobile phones at the point of care. Runners up included the Child & Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative's Well Visit Planner Mobile App, mobile data application to help parents plan and navigate their child's well visits, and Aggregated Self-Experiments, a platform that helps patients develop user-generated self-experiments and online information.

All three teams will receive travel support to AcademyHealth's 2012 Annual Research Meeting (ARM) in Orlando, Florida to showcase their submissions. In addition, the winning team will be awarded $5,000 plus travel support to attend a private meeting where they will have an opportunity to workshop their application with health policy thought leaders in conjunction with the AcademyHealth National Health Policy Conference (NHPC).