New York's Statewide Patient Portal Design Challenge Winners Announced!

NEW YORK, May 13, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) announced today the winners of its Design Challenge for the Patient Portal for New Yorkers. Mana Health placed first, iHealthNY second, and MyHealthProfile third and will be awarded $15,000, $7,500, and $2,500 respectively. View their products here.

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The Patient Portal for New Yorkers project is to build a website, through which New Yorkers across the state will be able to access all of their medical records from their various healthcare providers safely and securely. To create the most innovative and user-friendly portal design, NYeC launched a Design Challenge earlier this year, asking designers to submit portal prototypes. Then in April, the general public was asked to vote on which design submissions they liked best. Thousands of New Yorkers cast their votes and selected the nine remaining finalists.

"One of the most important achievements of the Challenge is that it engaged New Yorkers in this crucial discussion," said David Whitlinger, Executive Director at the New York eHealth Collaborative. "The portal is about making a patient's data freely accessible to them so they can manage their own healthcare. It's about bringing power to the people of New York."

The finalist companies demonstrated their products to panels of expert judges at an event in New York City on April 30^th and another in Buffalo on May 2^nd and the final winners were chosen. Judges included healthcare providers, hospital leadership, public advocates, entrepreneurs, public officials, IT experts, and industry leaders. The engaged audience encompassed a broad spectrum—patient advocates, technology specialists, representatives from RHIOs, small practice doctors, media, and members of the general public—and participated during question and answer sessions.

NYeC works closely with both the New York State Department of Health and the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The Patient Portal for New Yorkers builds upon the successful Blue Button initiative developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs to allow veterans easy access to their healthcare data.

"The NYeC Design Challenge is proof that extraordinary things are possible when we leverage creative developers and designers and the preferences of end users," said Rebecca Mitchell Coelius, MD, Medical Officer for Innovation at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, and a judge on the Design Challenge panel.  "It's exciting to see New York take the federal Blue Button initiative to the next level through its use of the patient portal. Well-designed and functional access to personal health data, and support for its export to other applications, is a huge step forward for patients in New York State and a massive opportunity for entrepreneurs." 

NYeC will now begin building the portal and coordinate its function on top of the Statewide Health Information Network of New York (SHIN-NY), a secure network for sharing clinical patient data across New York State via Regional Health Information Organizations.

"As New York moves forward with innovative projects to better integrate health information and medical records into patient care, it is essential that patients have access to their healthcare records so they can be engaged in managing their health.  This new portal will be user-friendly, secure, and easy to navigate, allowing New Yorkers to review and share their healthcare records and communicate with their healthcare providers. The Department values its partnership with NYeC, which is an essential part of the effort to accelerate health IT innovation," said New York State Health Commissioner Nirav R. Shah, M.D., M.P.H.

On May 15^th, NYeC will release a Request for Proposals to identify a company to work with on the portal development. Companies should visit nyehealth.org for RFP information.

The Patient Portal for New Yorkers will begin to be available to the public in 2014.

Key Features of the Portal Will Allow Patients To:

• Easily access their healthcare records whenever they want them. For example, to find out when they started taking a particular medication, when they had their last tetanus shot, or to view recent lab results.
• Share their records with providers—such as to get a second opinion on a diagnosis or share data from a specialist with their family doctor.
• Select and control who is allowed to have access to their medical history.
• Be more empowered in their healthcare management and better able to partner with doctors in their care.

About The New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC): NYeC is a not-for-profit organization, working in partnership with the New York State Department of Health to improve healthcare for all New Yorkers through health information technology (health IT). Founded in 2006 by healthcare leaders, NYeC receives funding from state and federal grants to serve as the focal point for health IT in the State of New York. NYeC works to develop policies and standards, to assist healthcare providers in making the shift to electronic health records, and to coordinate the creation of the Statewide Health Information Network of New York (SHIN-NY), a network to connect healthcare providers statewide. For more information about NYeC, visit www.nyehealth.org and @NYeHealth.

SOURCE New York eHealth Collaborative