About & Challenge Goal
Webinar for the AHRQ Digital Solutions to Support Care Transitions Challenge
We convened a webinar on Thursday, March 5, to field questions about the Challenge. The webinar was recorded (and closed-captioned).
AHRQ Digital Solutions to Support Care Transitions Challenge Webinar Video (1 hour, 15 minutes, 32 seconds)
AHRQ’s Digital Solutions to Support Care Transitions Challenge Overview: Slide Presentation (PDF, 2.6 MB)
Staff provided answers to potential applicants' questions, which you can access here. These will be updated as the team receives and answers new questions.
Announcing the Challenge
Care Transitions Challenge Video (1 minute, 41 seconds)
Alternative Audio-Described Version (1 minute, 41 seconds)
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is announcing a Challenge competition to develop interoperable health information technology (IT) solutions that engage patients and family caregivers during care transitions from inpatient hospital care to home (community living). AHRQ is using the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science (COMPETES) Reauthorization Act of 2010 to support this Challenge. 15 U.S.C. § 3719 (as amended).
To achieve the goal of improving care transitions, AHRQ is interested in receiving applications that propose technological solutions that ease administrative and information management burdens, and support patient activation and engagement, especially among Americans that may have low health literacy or limited English language proficiency. These technical solutions should leverage evidence-based standards.
Specifically, we seek solvers that will create interoperable digital health solutions that are developed with user-centered design. Solutions in this Challenge will improve care communications during transitions, develop and use standardized processes for leveraging and transferring data from electronic health records.
Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) serves as a standalone data exchange standard, but can be used in partnership with existing widely used standards, accelerating the develop process for digital solutions. FHIR is used to address the people, processes, and technology needed to send, receive, and use digital care plans and optimize medication reconciliation. Winning solutions that use FHIR in this Challenge would enable patients, families, and caregivers to receive and understand hospital discharge instructions and care plans while easing administrative burden on physicians, nurses, and staff at discharging hospitals.
FHIR Standards are valuable to AHRQ as design and architectural components of solutions submitted to this Challenge. Solvers will clearly demonstrate in their submissions how their solution uses standards and will be built to incorporate updates.
Challenge Goal
AHRQ is looking for innovative digital solutions that:
- Serve people with multiple chronic conditions by reducing the burden of care transitions between hospital and home.
- Are created with user-centered design methods to address the needs of healthcare providers and patients, families, and caregivers.
- Include individuals from the multiple chronic conditions (MCC) community throughout the development and testing of prototypes.
- Account for diverse levels of health literacy, cultural and linguistic diversity, and ease of provider, patient, and caregiver use.
This Challenge incentivizes development of technological solutions; researchers wishing to conduct original investigations testing the implementation or effectiveness of technological innovations, should consider AHRQ's funding opportunity announcement, "Improving Quality of Care and Patient Outcomes During Care Transitions."
For Further Information Contact
Name: Priscilla Novak, Ph.D., M.P.H., PMP
Email: ahrqchallenge@ahrq.hhs.gov
