The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) announced Tuesday a competition to improve consumer understanding and use of data comparing hospital prices but the results could also be of use to hospitals.
The RWJF Hospital Price Transparency Challenge, announced at Health Datapalooza in Washington, D.C., is another way to further the cause and use of price transparency and will make the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) hospital data, made available in May, ultimately more valuable, said Kathy Hempstead, senior program officer with RWJF.
[See also: CMS publishes hospital price data]
"There are a lot of forces pushing open the door to show the hospital price information on the other side, and one way to look at this challenge is it's just another push on the door," she said. "We hope this will spark discussion and innovation that will help further progress toward increased price transparency in healthcare."
The challenge is a competition for technology developers and consists of two components: creating visualizations of the data and developing consumer applications and tools.
The visualization piece requires developers to create visual representations that will help people better understand, explore and interpret hospital pricing. The design of consumer applications and tools should enhance understanding of hospital pricing information and continue to promote pricing transparency.
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While the focus of the competition is on pricing data, Hempstead said that applicants are encouraged to incorporate other data that can be used in combination with the hospital pricing data, like quality data at the hospital level.
And even though the competition is for creating tools for consumers to better use and understand pricing data, those tools could eventually end up being utilized by hospitals, which is part of the reason RWJF is encouraging applicants to utilize other types of hospital data in their visual representations and tools, said Hempstead.
"There may be some conclusions formed by the combination of data that is helpful for hospitals," she said. "People are incredibly creative so there may well be something that ends up being useful for the hospital industry."
The winners of the competition will share $120,000 in prize money. Winners of the visualization component of the challenge will be announced at the Health 2.0 Fall Conference in October 2013. The deadline for submissions is August 25.
The applications and tools component of the competition will take place in two phases. The first phase will select five semi-finalists, who will be announced at the Health 2.0 Fall Conference. The deadline for this first phase is August 4. The second phase will select winning entries from among the semi-finalists. Winners will be announced on December 9 at the mHealth Summit.
Information on the challenge is available here.
[See also: Hospital prices rose in April]