Host an Award
WHY YOU SHOULD Host
When it comes to solving challenging problems, we believe we can go farther, faster, with friends. By adding a Patient Safety Technology Award/Prize to your existing competition, you can help to make progress on the persistent problem of medical error. This Challenge will provoke your innovators to think about a complex problem that has been plaguing our healthcare system for decades.
Other complex, high-risk industries deploy available technologies, predictive analytics, and sophisticated detection systems to anticipate and prevent harm before it occurs. Health care has been a laggard and patient safety continues to be an underrepresented issue within the tech sector. You can help to change this by bringing our Challenge to your innovators to help foster innovation and build solutions that will deliver long-lasting social good.
In addition to the financial awards associated with the Challenge, winners also will benefit from the existing downstream support networks – such as incubators and accelerators – that exist within your local community for innovators.
Benefits, Expectations, and Proposal Information for
Prospective Competitions & Events
BENEFITS for Host Organizations
To support organizations in adding patient safety awards into their hackathon, ideathon, startup weekend, or competition, the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) can provide:
FUNDING: PRHI has funding available to enable organizations to add patient safety awards into their competitions, hackathons, and other innovation events. PRHI prioritizes funding projects at $10k or less. Proposals above that amount may be considered under special circumstances.
JUDGING: PRHI can identify patient safety experts and activists to serve as judges if requested.
TOOLKIT: PRHI will provide a toolkit to help the competitions add a patient safety award category to their event, with messaging, graphics, sample criteria, application questions, judging rubrics, and survey questions to assess the participants’ awareness of patient safety.
PROMOTION: PRHI will list the participating competitions (with their logos) on the Patient Safety Technology Challenge’s website and social media channels to raise awareness of the competition.
EXPECTATIONS of Host Organizations
The organizations that PRHI selects to receive funding to incorporate a patient safety award into their competition or event agree to:
CREATE A PATIENT SAFETY AWARD that challenges innovators to reimagine patient safety.
Challenge 1: Developing Consumer-Driven Innovations
We invite innovators to build self-directed patient safety technologies. These innovations can equip consumers with the tools, technologies, and information they need to anticipate and prevent harm wherever they receive care.
Innovators should consider how they can put emerging technologies—such as AI, augmented and virtual reality, digital health tools, remote monitoring, mobile apps, wearable devices, predictive analytics, and more—into the hands of the consumer.
These consumer-driven innovations should focus on reducing patient harm in one or more of the following problem categories:
medication-related errors,
medical complications with patient care,
procedure/surgery-related errors,
infections, and/or
diagnostic errors.
Challenge 2: Taking Inspiration from “The Pitch”
We invite innovators to watch The Pitch: Patient Safety’s Next Generation, a documentary funded and co-produced by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation that showcases emerging technologies with the potential to advance patient safety. From command centers focused on real-time safety monitoring, to VR in outpatient care, AR for training the next generation, and AI tools for clinicians, the future is bright! This challenge invites innovators to select a technology featured in the film and develop a solution that is simple, impactful, effective, and sustainable.
CONNECT THE WINNERS TO SUPPORT NETWORKS in the local academic and entrepreneurial enterprise to help them further develop their ideas.
SHARE DATA & INFORMATION with PRHI about the applicants and winners who submitted ideas for the patient safety awards, including:
the number of applicants with information about their demographics and university/college;
the patient safety problem(s) the applicants used in their submissions;
a description of their technology-enabled ideas and whether the ideas used ML, AI, or robotics; and
a profile of the winning idea(s) and team(s) to promote through the Patient Safety Technology Challenge
APPLY TO Host
To apply for funding under the Patient Safety Technology Challenge, please fill out and submit the form below. If you have any questions please email Ariana at longley@phri.org.