HIT Crowdsourcing Picks Up, VCs Eye Winners

Health IT codathons, developer challenges, and programming contests are taking on increasing importance as small groups of developers are being encouraged to enter the innovation game. The hope is that ultimately winners and runners-up will gain venture funding to create systems that improve healthcare and reduce costs. Also known as crowdsourcing, these challenges are being pushed by HHS, ONC, even the Surgeon General has held a developer contest, all aiming to spark innovation.

Indeed, such innovation historically has been difficult to reach in the healthcare realm, said Jim Hansen, vice president and executive director of Dossia Consortium, a nonprofit open-source personal health record service developed by a group of Fortune 500 employers. “We need to attract to our industry the best and the brightest, the people who might not otherwise have considered us,” Hansen said...