Microsoft Corp. officials announced that the company's HealthVault Be Well Fund has increased its funding to $4.5 million after receiving nearly 200 proposals from leading academic and research health organizations across the United States.
The fund was designed to stimulate not-for-profit research and development across a broad range of health disciplines that have the potential to improve health and outcomes for patients.
The proposals represent a wide range of online solutions designed to address significant health issues including childhood obesity, medication reconciliation, mobile health information gathering and dissemination and diabetes management, as well as proposals to help people manage their health more effectively.
Company officials say strong interest and participation in the request for proposals has made it one of the most successful Microsoft Research RFPs in its history.
A panel of judges, representing leaders from across the health field, will determine the recipients of awards from the Microsoft HealthVault Be Well Fund. Recipients will be announced at the second annual Microsoft HealthVault Solutions Conference, taking place June 9-10 in Bellevue, Wash.
"Saving lives is the goal of all healthcare professionals, and I believe that a patient's knowledge of his or her own health status is critical to that goal," said Newt Gingrich, founder of the Center for Health Transformation and one of the judges on the panel. "Microsoft brings leadership through the Be Well Fund, as well as expertise and institutional weight to the goal of having every American control their own health records."
The fund is designed to finance innovative avenues of research and explore the potential for disruptive improvements to health management enabled by the re-use and sharing of data between people, families, caregivers, doctors and facilities.
"We are at the beginning of a long journey to bring healthcare into the Internet Age - and no one company can do this alone," said Peter Neupert, corporate vice president of the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft. "We created the HealthVault Be Well Fund to stimulate invention by health champions who believe in the use of information technology to improve health and patient outcomes. We are delighted with the response and have increased the funding to help more organizations move faster to turn ideas into real online health solutions."
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Associate Editor Molly Merrill at molly.merrill@medtechpublishing.com.