11 Aug 2016

Finalists Announced in Harvard Business School-Harvard Medical School Health Acceleration Challenge

ShareBar

BOSTON—The Forum on Health Care Innovation, a collaboration between Harvard Business School (HBS) and Harvard Medical School (HMS), announced today the four finalists in its Health Acceleration Challenge, which focuses on taking compelling, already-implemented health care solutions and helping them to grow and increase their impact through powerful networking and funding opportunities.

Addicaid, Carrum Health, Ochsner Health System, and Radial Analytics emerged as the 2016 finalists (meet the finalists here). The finalists will share $150,000 in prize money now, with an additional $50,000 going to the eventual winner, who will be named a year from now, after the four finalists have pursued their dissemination plans. All of them will become the subject of an HBS case study. Since its launch in 2014, the Health Acceleration Challenge has received over 600 applications and attracted more than 25,000 online visitors from 29 countries.

The 2016 Health Acceleration Challenge finalists are:

Addicaid: An addiction wellness platform for patients, payers, and providers.

Carrum Health: Rationalizing cost and quality in healthcare...bundle by bundle.

Ochsner Health System: A technology-enabled and precision-based model of care to conveniently and proactively manage the nation’s most prevalent chronic condition.

Radial Analytics: An evidence-driven decision support platform to help hospitals reduce post-acute costs for shared-risk patients while improving outcomes.

A team of 24 judges--a mix of clinicians, health care professionals, and academics--specializing in health care and innovation, reviewed the applications. Applications were rated based on the three Challenge criteria of impact, evidence, and dissemination, and given an overall score to create a short list of 21 innovations. These 21 innovations went through additional rounds of judging to identify 7 ‘shortlisted’ candidates and, ultimately, 4 strong finalists.

The funding for the Health Acceleration Challenge was provided by a generous gift from Howard E. Cox, Jr. (MBA 1969), a former general partner and now advisory partner in one of the country’s first and most successful venture capital firms, Greylock Partners, and a member of both the HBS Healthcare Initiative Advisory Board and the HMS Board of Fellows. During his long and distinguished career, Cox has been involved in the funding and development of many successful healthcare ventures.

“Health care delivery often suffers from extreme fragmentation and localization. This Challenge is a step in trying to change that,” said Cara Sterling, Director of the HBS Health Care Initiative. “It’s exciting to see innovations dealing with all different parts of the health care value chain. These ideas, and many others we received, have the potential to make a great impact on the U.S. health care system if scaled up in a dramatic way.”

The HBS-HMS Forum on Health Care Innovation is led by a steering committee composed of Sterling as well as MBA Class of 1961 Professor of Management Practice Richard G. Hamermesh and Albert J. Weatherhead III Professor of Business Administration Robert S. Huckman, all from Harvard Business School, and from Harvard Medical School, Dr. Barbara J. McNeil, Ridley Watts Professor and founding head of the Department of Health Care Policy, and Joseph P. Newhouse, John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management.

To learn more or to follow the challenge, please visit www.healthaccelerationchallenge.com.

ABOUT THE HBS-HMS FORUM ON HEALTH CARE INNOVATION
The Forum on Health Care Innovation is collaboration between Harvard Business School (HBS) and Harvard Medical School (HMS). Its purpose is to unite leading executives, policymakers, and academics in a cross-disciplinary exploration of innovative actions to improve quality, reduce costs, and, ultimately, increase value in the health care industry. In 2014 the Forum launched the Health Acceleration Challenge to identify and promote demonstrated health care innovations, and selected four finalists and one winner to share the Cox Prize.

ABOUT HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
Harvard Medical School has more than 7,500 full-time faculty working in 10 academic departments located at the School’s Boston campus or in hospital-based clinical departments at 15 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Hebrew SeniorLife, Joslin Diabetes Center, Judge Baker Children’s Center, Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Schepens Eye Research Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital, Mount Auburn Hospital, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and VA Boston Healthcare System.

Contacts

Cara Sterling
csterling+hbs.edu
617-495-6126

About Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School, located on a 40-acre campus in Boston, was founded in 1908 as part of Harvard University. It is among the world's most trusted sources of management education and thought leadership. For more than a century, the School's faculty has combined a passion for teaching with rigorous research conducted alongside practitioners at world-leading organizations to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. Through a dynamic ecosystem of research, learning, and entrepreneurship that includes MBA, Doctoral, Executive Education, and Online programs, as well as numerous initiatives, centers, institutes, and labs, Harvard Business School fosters bold new ideas and collaborative learning networks that shape the future of business.