Blog rally for the Healthcare X PRIZE

Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, has organized a blog rally to help design the Healthcare X PRIZE, a competition to improve the value of health care. Deadline for public comment is this Friday (5/29). Scott Shreeve, MD Senior Health Advisor at the X PRIZE Foundation, writes:

… the X PRIZE Foundation, along with WellPoint Inc and WellPoint Foundation as sponsor, has introduced a $10MM prize for health care innovators to implement a new model of health. The focus of the prize is to increase health care value by 50% in a 10,000 person community over a three year period.

The Healthcare X PRIZE team has released an Initial Prize Design and is actively seeking public comment. We are hoping, and encouraging everyone at every opportunity, to engage in this effort to help design a system of care that can produce dramatic breakthroughs at both an individual vitality and community health level.

Here is your opportunity to contribute:

1. Download the Initial Prize Design
2. Share your comments regarding the prize concept, the measurement framework, and the likelihood of this prize to impact health and health care reform.
3. Share the Initial Prize Design document with as many of your health, innovation, design, technology, academic, business, political, and patient friends as you can to provide an opportunity for their participation

Last fall I attended a talk by the fabulous Erika Wagner, head of the X PRIZE Lab @ MIT. Erika noted that most (all?) of the past X PRIZE winners have been people working outside of their educational background/field of expertise. At what point does experience hinder instead of help, narrowing one’s vision of what is possible? Will the Healthcare X PRIZE will be won by teams with a lot of input from outside of health care?

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