Princeton, N.J.-based Mathematica has won the grand prize winner in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Visualization Resources of Community Health-Level Social Determinants of Health Challenge.
AHRQ Director Gopal Khanna, M.B.A., made the announcement at AcademyHealth’s annual Health Datapalooza conference in Washington, D.C.
Mathematica won the $50,000 award for its “Community Connector” data visualization tool. Designed for use by local government and public health officials, payers, researchers, and individual community members, the initial focus of the Community Connector app was to visualize the association between social determinants of health and the incidence of obesity, diabetes, and kidney disease in Colorado. By using a number of county-level health data sources, the app provides outcome-agnostic, county-level scores for six domains of social determinants of health. Using a machine-learning algorithm, the tool allows users to identify counties most similar to theirs, in terms of demographic and non-modifiable social needs characteristics relevant to obesity, diabetes, and kidney disease. The app displays the distribution of health outcomes for all counties and the 20 counties most similar to a particular user for comparison.
"While data offer us new ways of understanding our world, it can be challenging for communities to make sense of torrents of data streams. Innovations in data visualization, such as the Community Connector tool, turn data into a guiding compass," Khanna said, in a statement. "Together, data, analytics, and visualization will help deliver 21st century healthcare for patients and evidence-based health policy for communities."
Salish Research Group was named the runner up and will receive $35,000, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was named third-place finisher and will receive $15,000.
AHRQ intends to use the data visualization innovations produced as part of this challenge as it considers new ways of presenting the agency’s data sets and analytic tools to the public.
Khanna also announced a new AHRQ challenge competition focused on digital solutions to support patients, families, and health professionals in managing transitions from hospital to home. This new challenge competition has a total prize pool of $175,000. Submissions are due by April 6, 2020.
In this new competition, AHRQ is seeking applications proposing personalized, high-tech ways to ease administrative and information management burdens and support patient activation and engagement, especially among Americans diagnosed with multiple chronic conditions and those that may have low health literacy or limited English language proficiency.
