Heritage Provider Network Announces the Heritage Health Prize Will Include $230,000 in Progress Prizes

MARINA DEL REY, Calif., March 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Richard Merkin, President and CEO of Heritage Provider Network, announced today that the $3 million Heritage Health Prize, the world's largest predictive modeling contest, will also include progress prizes totaling $230,000.  

Details were revealed at the Predictive Analytics World Conference in San Francisco. The progress prizes will be awarded to teams leading the competition at various milestones: $50,000 to the top two teams at the six month mark, (split as $30,000, $20,000),$80,000 to the top two teams at the twelve month mark (split as $50,000, $30,000) and $100,000 to the top two teams at the eighteen month mark (split at $60,000, $40,000).

Contestants in the challenge will be provided with a data set consisting of the de-identified medical records of patients covering a specific time period, and will then be required to predict who from that patient population went to the hospital during the year following the start date.   HPN will award the $3 million prize (more than twice what is paid for the Nobel Prize in medicine) to the first participant or team that achieves the required level of predictive accuracy.

"The goal of the Heritage Health Prize is to challenge the competitors to solve a societal problem that will help realign the focus of health care delivery from sick care to true 'health care'," said Robert O'Keefe, Senior HPN Executive, speaking at the PAW Conference.  "We believe that including progress prizes will help motivate people to rise to the challenge.  And, once a team or individual successfully meets the challenge, we will use the resulting algorithm to provide better care to our patients."

Also speaking at the PAW Conference, Anthony Goldbloom, CEO of Kaggle, the company running the HPN Health Prize.

"Predictive modeling competitions turn out to be an amazing way to spur innovation," said Goldbloom.  Of the competitions Kaggle has hosted so far, none has significantly failed to outperform the state of the art. We're looking forward to seeing what breakthroughs will come out of the Heritage Health Prize."

"I'm counting on all the bright, young smart minds across the world to enter the HPN Health Prize and come up with the winning algorithm to help us provide a higher level of care, while lowering the costs," said Dr. Richard Merkin, President and CEO of HPN. "This is an exciting, innovative challenge to help families save money on their health care costs while improving the health of the nation."

For more information on the HPN Health Prize go to: www.heritagehealthprize.com

ABOUT HPN:

Heritage Provider Network, Inc. (HPN) is on the cutting edge of the accountable care model of health care delivery: coordinated, patient-doctor centric, integrated health care systems that represent the future of health care in the United States. HPN develops programs and services that are responsive to the healthcare needs of today's patient. HPN designs its networks to offer patients a comprehensive range of medical care in convenient locations.  It organizes and manages medical groups and independent practice associations, integrating with hospitals and ancillary care providers. This system represents a workable, successful business model that has been duplicated with medical groups, IPAs and medical facilities throughout California.  HPN is dedicated to quality, affordable health care and putting patients' wellness first. (www.heritageprovidernetwork.com)

ABOUT KAGGLE

Kaggle is a company that hosts predictive modeling competitions, allowing companies to post their problems and have the best in the world compete to offer the best solution. Kaggle has already used competitions to help improve the state of the art in HIV research, and motorway travel time forecasting.

Data science competitions are becoming exciting, as companies and researchers are realizing that they are the only way to really get the most out of a dataset. Participants are finding that they can use competitions to further their knowledge and skills, test their ideas, meet the most inspiring people and develop a reputation as a world-leading performer. Kaggle is bringing these two groups together, providing new opportunities in data science. (www.kaggle.com)

SOURCE Heritage Provider Network, Inc.