X-prize = Build the perfect health system

Readers of Health Policy Dialog...check this out. This is a really exciting offer from the X-prize this year to design a new health care system for an American community. Would be really exciting to develop a model system (though the scope is small only 10,000 people).

http://www.xprize.org/future-x-prizes/healthcare-x-prize


WASHINGTON (Reuters) Apr 15 - Organizers of the X Prize, who have set up
contests for space travel, DNA research and super-efficient cars, said on
Tuesday they are offering $10 million to the winner of a contest to
transform the health of people in a small U.S. community.

They invited written ideas for the Healthcare X Prize, and said they would
choose five for a three-year trial run in real communities or at employers.

The winner would be chosen based on a "community health index" of measures
such as an improved ability to climb stairs, reductions in visits to
emergency rooms and health costs.

"We need to show that the innovation works and then that the innovation is
scalable. It's going to be a public solution," Angela Braly, president and
chief executive officer of WellPoint Inc, a major U.S. health insurer that
is helping sponsor the prize, told a news conference.

"We are looking for teams to help individuals and communities proactively
improve their own health and (that) of their families," added Dr. Peter
Diamandis, chairman and chief executive of the non-profit X Prize
Foundation.

"Teams are actually going to have to design and implement a system across a
community of 10,000 people that improves health by 50 percent during a
three-year trial period."

The competition and all results will be audited by an independent panel of
judges and "trusted third parties," the group said in offering the prize
plan for a 45-day public comment period.

"The Smithsonian would never have funded the Wright Brothers to invent the
airplane," said Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives who now helps head up the Center for Health Transformation.
"I think this will bring diversity."

The plan gives teams 18 months to conceive, model, and submit their plans.

Healthcare reform is near the top of the agenda for President Barack Obama,
the Congress and U.S. society as a whole. More than 80 percent of Americans
have said in several surveys they believe the U.S. healthcare system needs
substantial reform.

The United States ranks last among 19 industrialized nations on health
outcomes, quality and efficiency, according to a report by the non-profit
Commonwealth Fund.

In 2008, the United States fell from 15th to last on measures of
preventable death from chronic conditions such as asthma and heart attacks,
the report found.

Medical bills cause half of all U.S. personal bankruptcies, most among
middle-class workers with health insurance, according to a 2005 study by
researchers at Harvard University.