CHIME Names Two Concept Blitz Round Winners for National Patient ID Challenge

More than 113 innovators from around the world submitted entries for the CHIME Healthcare Innovation Trust National Patient ID Challenge’s Concept Blitz Round, the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based College of Healthcare Information Management Executives announced today.

Earlier this year, CHIME announced a National Patient ID Challenge, a $1 million crowdsourcing competition to incentivize the private sector to develop a fail-safe patient identifying solution that links patients to their medical records. Partnering with HeroX, a crowdsourcing innovation platform, on the initiative, CHIME aims to encourage innovators to help solve the complex problem of patient misidentification. There is currently no universal standard to 100 percent accurately identify patients and match them to their medical records. And, since 1999, the federal government has been prohibited from spending public funds on the development of a national patient identifier.

For the Concept Blitz Round, CHIME said that concept entries ranged from the use of quantum physics to multi-faceted biometric technologies as methods for ensuring accurate patient identification. Following a thorough review by a panel of five independent judges, 23 proposals were selected as semifinalists and eight submissions were chosen as finalists. Today, CHIME named two Concept Blitz Round winners for submitting concepts that are well positioned to meet criteria for a national patient ID solution. Both will receive a $30,000 prize. The winning submissions, per CHIME’s announcement are:

• Michael Braithwaite, whose proposal promises to tap into enhanced biometric technology to create an easy-to-implement and scalable solution
• Mark Schroeder, whose proposal relies on HL7-approved standards for data exchange to enable demographic and biometric data to be utilized for patient identification

The other six finalists were:

• Shawnnah Castillo
• Kathryn Elaine
• Mathematica Policy Research (team)
• Spiral Nebula (team)
• RightPatient (team)
• Bon Sy and Ayman Zeidan

“One of the most encouraging aspects of the Concept Blitz Round is the fact that so many ideas seem to leverage technology that already exists and won’t require wholesale disruption of our information technology systems. This reinforces CHIME’s position that we can find a solution that can be deployed regardless of provider type, size or location,” said CHIME board chair Marc Probst, vice president and chief information officer, Intermountain Healthcare.

The challenge now moves into the Final Innovation Round, which is open from June 1 to November 10. Innovators must register by July 12 to be eligible for the ultimate $1 million prize. Innovators were not required to participate in the Concept Blitz Round in order to enter Final Innovation Round.

Simultaneous to this initiative, CHIME continues to advocate for lifting the decades-old ban that greatly limits the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from exploring options for a national patient identifier.

“As patients increasingly seek care across the continuum, and data moves from one care setting to another, it is vital that we ensure patients are accurately identified and matched to their records,” Probst said. “Enabling HHS to work with the private sector to find and implement a patient identification solution will boost our efforts to improve patient safety and reduce costs.”