The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is excited to have launched a series of new Investing in Innovation (i2) Initiative competitions at the recent Health Datapalooza! The i2 program promotes the use of technology to find solutions that drive better outcomes, engage users in their health, and improve health care quality. The first series of i2 challenges targeted at developing new functionality for the HHS’ Health Data Platform is available at HealthData.gov.

As part of the HHS Open Government Plan, the HealthData.gov Platform (HDP) is a flagship initiative helping to establish communities that collaboratively improve the utility and usability of public health and human service data. Overall, HDP will deliver greater potential for new data-driven insights into complex interactions of health and health care services.

To augment the HDP effort, seven complementary i2 challenges will be released over the course of a year, and are designed to encourage innovation around priority areas.  These challenges will also foster opportunities to tap the creativity of entrepreneurs and productivity of developers. The first two efforts include the “Health Data Platform Metadata Challenge” and the “Health Data Platform Simple Sign-On Challenge.”

• The “Health Data Platform Metadata Challenge” seeks the application of existing government metadata standards to develop new designs of health-specific metadata for datasets in the platform’s growing catalog. This will form the foundation for better integration of data that can be used to discover insights into public health.
• The “Health Data Platform Simple Sign-On Challenge” will improve HDP community engagement by providing simplified sign-on (SSO) for users interacting across diverse HDP components, making it easier for community collaboration.

Submissions for both i2 challenges are due on October 2, 2012. The first place teams will win $20,000, with awards of $10,000 and $5,000 going to each of the second and third place teams, respectively.

For More Information

• Health Data Platform Metadata Challenge
• Health Data Platform Simple Sign-On Challenge
• Health IT Buzz Blog: Health Innovation

To learn more about health information technology in general, visit HealthIT.gov.