ONC launches two new health IT video contests

HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is launching two new contests calling on patients and families to create short videos showing how they use technology to manage their care and meet health-related goals.

The first contest, the Cancer Care Video Challenge (PDF), instructs applicants to submit videos—running two minutes or less—that demonstrate how they have used health IT as a tool to meet a cancer-care goal. Submissions are due Dec 12 and will be judged on criteria such as creativity, video quality and number of video plays on sites such as YouTube, the ONC said.

For the second contest, the ONC is soliciting short videos about how people use health IT tools to manage care for a loved one. Possible topics could include the benefits of remote monitoring or tools that ease provider-caregiver communication, the ONC said in an announcement in the Federal Register about the Caregivers Video Challenge (PDF). The deadline for that contest is Dec. 10.

A total of $7,750 in prize money is up for grabs in each of the two contests, including awards of $3,000 for first-prize winners and $750 for honorable mentions.

The two contests are the latest in a series of video challenges the ONC has held throughout 2012. The first, announced in January, focused on ways that health IT can improve patients' overall health. Another video challenge, launched in August, asked applicants to show how they used health IT to manage their medications.

"The goal of this video-contest series is to generate inspirational stories that may be used to motivate and inspire others to leverage technology to better manage their health and be more-engaged partners in their health and healthcare," the ONC said in the announcement.