Challenge Related FAQs

Challenges enable the Federal government to tap into the expertise and creativity of the public in new ways. Under the Administrations’ directive calling for innovative ways to generate ideas and collaboration,  challenges are policy tools that can foster participation in government activities through the process of co-creation. As an inducement of participation, challenges may offer a variety of “prizes”, including cash, recognition, or the deployment of a winning solution.

HHS has created a webpage with extensive resources and links covering the entire challenge process. Visit Challenge.gov to view the challenges being run by the federal government.

Challenge proposals must fit several criteria to proceed with further development. Most importantly, challenges must support the achievement of ONC and HHS strategic goals and have the potential to significantly impact public health. An idea for a challenge needs to create a solution that does not already exist or solves a problem in which there are no existing solutions that sufficiently address the problem.

Successful challenges are those that leave potential solvers with plenty of room to use their creativity and experiences both inside and outside of healthcare to craft something original. The core idea must be able to be simplified and abstracted in such a way that individuals in adjacent, non-health domains can understand it. This keeps the problem comprehensible for all potential solvers and makes it less intimidating for those with non-health experience – an important consideration, as research has demonstrated that problems are most frequently solved by those outside of the subject domain.

Additional criteria include the potential for breakthrough innovation, technical complexity and difficulty, and how much the topic area is in need of increased attention and development.

Individuals who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and private entities incorporated in and maintaining a primary place of business in the U.S. are eligible to win prizes. There are no restrictions on participation and solution submission.

Federal employees are eligible to win prizes provided that they do not work on their submissions during duty hours, and do not use Federal facilities or consult with Federal employees that are not made available equitably to other challenge participants.

Challenge reviewers are selected by the challenge managers for their subject matter and technical expertise. Challenge reviewing panels are usually a mix of federal (ONC and other HHS agencies) and non-federal (including non-profits and private sector) experts.

Each challenge uses different criteria that reflect what should be achieved by an innovative solution. However, challenges with similar anticipated outcomes will have common criteria. For example, solutions that are mobile health apps must be easy to learn and use, not contain malware, and function as intended.

Award amounts are determined similar to how challenges are selected. An award amount will be larger if, for example, the solution has a high degree of technical complexity, will require a longer amount of time to create, has a high potential for public health impact, or is in a particular area that we want to shine a spotlight on.

Awards are also used to incentivize the target solver base and therefore do not necessarily have to be monetary. While money may be the prime motivator for some, peer recognition, exposure to funders or investors, and free passes to industry conferences, for example, can also be the appropriate incentives.

Intellectual property policies vary from challenge to challenge and are specified in each challenge’s announcement in the Federal Register. Generally, ONC challenges leave intellectual property with the challenge winner and seek a one-year, non-exclusive license.

ONC maintains a list of past and open challenges on the ONC TechWeb site.

• Current ONC prizes and challenges
• Winners of past challenges

In January of 2009, OMB to issued an Open Government Directive [PDF - 86 KB] to prompt executive departments and agencies to take specific actions to implement the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration. The directive specifically calls upon executive agencies to use innovative methods such as prizes and challenges to obtain ideas from and to increase collaboration with the public, including those in the private sector, non-profit, and academic communities. 

Section 105 of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 [PDF - 300 KB] provides federal departments and agencies with the authority to plan and execute challenges and competitions, and specifically authorizes the use of appropriated funds for these purposes. 

Challenges serve purposes beyond the creation of innovations and solutions to problems in health IT. They allow ONC to highlight specific programs, activities, and areas in need of development. Drawing attention to these areas can help stimulate private sector investment that may otherwise have been lacking. Awarding prizes to individuals and teams who solve a problem can motivate and inspire others who have not participated in such efforts or do not think of the government as a hotbed of innovation. Challenges help us reach out to communities that have not previously considered working on health IT problems, even though their expertise in other subject areas may lend itself well to thinking about these issues; the application of other experiences can produce the out-of-the-box thinking needed to create genuine innovation.

The Investing in Innovation program has seen numerous successes and have generated applications and tools that are available to people right now to help them address and take charge of their health.

The Health Design Challenge  tasked designers to recreate the patient health record, with the winners all available under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. The entries beautifully reimagined different aspects of the patient record, with three overall winners and special awards for the best medication, problem/medical history, and lab summaries sections.

The Million Hearts Risk Check Challenge awarded a first-place prize to Marshfield Clinic for its iOS  and web-based  apps that allow users to check their cardiovascular risk based on a set of simple questions. The apps analyze user-entered data including height, weight, age, and sex to provide a risk score. Accuracy increases if users provide their blood pressure and cholesterol readings, and a mapping function will them the nearest location where they can be assessed if they do not have that information.

The Using Public Data for Cancer Prevention and Control Challenge awarded two first-place prizes, to TrialX and MyCancerGenome. The challenge, run in conjunction with the National Cancer Institute, asked developers to create innovative software tools that use public data to address problems faced by consumers, clinicians, or researchers on the cancer control continuum. Current tools available on the web for discovering and enrolling in cancer trials are cluttered, do not present information in usable ways, and are not patient-friendly. TrialX’s AskDory platform  provides cancer patients with an intuitive, easy-to-use tool to allow them to find and connect them to local cancer trials. My Cancer Genome , managed by the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, supplements its clinical trial connectivity with detailed information about cancer mutations and available therapies.

The Ensuring Safe Transitions from Hospital to Home Challenge focused on the transition for patients between care settings. During the transition from one setting to the next, patients frequently do not have all the information they need about their condition, medications, medical equipment, or other important details, leading to readmissions that could have been avoided. One of the winners, Humetrix ​, created the iBlueButton app , which allows users to make sure they have all the information they need as they make their transition and also provides them with the ability to download and review their personal health records from Blue Button-compliant portals. Users can also send data to and receive data from their provider’s iPad running the companion iBlue Button Pro app . In addition, military veterans can use the version of the iBlueButton Veterans app that links to the My HealtheVet patient portal .

Circle of 6  was one of two winners of the Apps Against Abuse Challenge. Nineteen percent of women report experiencing sexual assault while in college. Many of these assaults occur when the offender, often an acquaintance, has targeted and isolated a young woman in vulnerable circumstances. This challenge was designed to empower young people to look out for their friends in order to proactively prevent sexual abuse and violence from occurring. The Circle of 6 app  allows the user to designate six friends to receive pre-written text messages indicating that the user is in an uncomfortable situation and wants to be picked up or called on the phone. It has been downloaded over 30,000 times and been featured in a number of outlets, including The New York Times, MTV, Wired, and Cosmopolitan.

These are just a few of the innovations that have been created using through the Investing in Innovation program. See videos and descriptions of all the winners .