The Office for the National Coordinator (ONC) has announced the winners of its Blue Button Co-Design Challenge this week at the Consumer Health IT Summit, which is a daylong event held during the annual Health IT Week.
The contest asked developers to create apps that implement and use Blue Button Plus functionality to address one of several patient problems. The winning team was GenieMD, an app that provides users with a variety of patient services including symptom checking, finding providers and pharmacies, and alerts for drug interactions through what ONC calls is an “intuitive, easy-to-use interface.”
It also combined data from multiple providers through Blue Button +, including patient-entered data, data from smart devices, and content provided by Harvard Health Publications.
In second place was Humetrix, which used its experience with the iBlueButton app, to develop ICEBlueButton. This app combines medical condition, medication, and allergy information to create an ICE (In Case of Emergency) record and a QR code that can be used by emergency personnel. It will be available on Oct. 14 for iOS devices. In third place was Hint Health with CareTracker, which chronologically integrates care tasks including medications, appointments, and therapy.
The developers used Blue Button Plus, introduced earlier this year to make consumers’ health data even more accessible through the implementation of interoperable standards that can push and pull structured EHR data between a third-party consumer health data application in an unstructured format. Ideas for the apps were crowd-sourced by patients. All entries can be viewed at http://vote.healthtechhatch.com.
