Crowdsourcing at the VHA: 26 Winning IT Innovations #health20fr #health20

Continuing in the crowd-sourcing, 2.0 mode, Silber's Blog is  particularly pleased to post this information about a completed crowd-sourcing competition at the VHA, who  remain near and dear since my mission to Tulsa and Washington DC a few years ago.

 The employees at the VHA submitted 26 winning ideas between February and May 28th when the contest winners were announced. 

These run the gamut from search engines to a  suicide hotline and a touchscreen device for nurse support.

6500 ideas were submitted. Then a  web-based voting method narrowed the submissions to a smaller group of finalists that were then judged by a panel.  

The panel consisted of 24 department employee and other distinguished participants, including Craig, the founder of "the" list, Dr. Harvey Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine; Dr. Robert Kolodner, health IT consultant (and former VHA CTO person); Dr. Mehret Mandefro, White House fellow; Dr. Stephen Ondra, VA’s senior policy advisor for health affairs; Peter Levin, VA’s chief technology officer; and, Todd Park, chief technology officer for the Department of Health and Human Services.   

Click for the 26 best of the 6500 !

The VHA/OIT Innovation Competition Winning Innovations

·      Reducing health care associated infections using informatics

·      CPRS-based automated queries & reports

·      Robust VA forms search engine

·      Augment CPRS with standards-based decision support engine

·      Enhanced care management to facilitate case management and chronic disease care

·      Integration of behavioral health lab & CPRS for mental health primary care

·      Edischarge pilot program

·      Show patient picture in CPRS

·      CPRS enhancement for veteran-centered care

·      "Parking" outpatient prescriptions to prevent waste

·      Suicide hotline: be a hero, save a hero

·      Touch screen device support for nursing triage of patients

·      Tools for front line veteran eligibility staffing

·      VA-wide core collection of knowledge based information resources

·      Integrate VistA surgery package with CPRS

·      Illustrated medication instructions for veterans

·      Share verified insurance info via use of the master patient index

·      Veteran online tracking of mail prescription delivery

·      Search function in CPRS

·      Accessible contact information for all assigned care providers

·      Online radiology protocoling tool integrated within CPRS/VistA

·      Wireless voice communications with hands free options

·      Improved access to military personnel records

·      Brief resident supervision index

·      Emergency medical response team communication

·      Reduce unnecessary/duplicate lab tests by rules-based algorithms