HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell announced the seven winners of the eighth annual HHS Innovates Awards, an award program recognizing solutions for key healthcare challenges developed by HHS employees.
HHS employees submit solutions which are judged on the basis of innovativeness and potential application in the HHS and the federal government.
Here are this year's Innovates Awards.
- The NIH 3D Print Exchange: This is an online portal developed by the National Institutes of Health that would allow access to and the exchange of 3D printing files. There are currently more than 5,000 3D models in the portal that are accessible to the public.
- Transforming Health Provider Loan Repayment Programs: The National Health Services Corps and NURSE Corps Loan Repayment Programs have been reengineered to reduce the processing time of 3,200 loan repayment awards by 6 months. This has saved more than $3 million in taxpayer dollars since 2013.
- Peri-Operative Surgical Home: Developed by the Indian Health Service Phoenix Indian Medical Center, this initiative gathers multidisciplinary representatives to plan the care for complex surgical patients before, during and after surgery.
- The Collaborative Improvement and Innovation Network to Reduce Infant Mortality: Representatives from the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention, CMS and the Health Resources and Services administration launched a collaborative network to facilitate ongoing communication, learning, innovation and quality improvement across the country to reduce infant mortality and improve poor birth outcomes.
- Linking Health Care & Community Services: This learning collaborative was developed by the Administration for Community Living to help community providers learn to strategically contract with healthcare entities to reduce hospital and nursing home admissions and reduce overall healthcare costs.
- Stretching NIH Research Dollars Further: The Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse at the NIH provides free access to data and pay-per-use access to unlimited computing power for neuroimaging researchers, allowing them to conduct research using community-vetted tools and resources.
- Project Fish SCALE: Led by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, this innovation is a new approach to seafood labeling and species identification, partly to trace illnesses caused by seafood and respond to claims of mislabeling and fraud.
"Fostering innovation across the department is critical to effectively addressing the challenges of today and delivering for those we serve," said Secretary Burwell in a statement. "The HHS Innovates Awards Program empowers our teams with the resources they need to drive innovative solutions to deliver on our mission of providing Americans with the building blocks of healthy and productive lives."
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Jonathan Bush says payer M&A signals downfall of innovation: 4 thoughts
Push and pull: How Kaiser Permanente is bringing innovation to scale