There's a whole electronic library of useful healthcare information for new parents, and there's a new programming interface developers can use to access federal databases.
So, HHS, its Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, and its Health Resources and Services Administration want some talented programmers to go at it, combining the library and the application programming interface, or API, to come up with some cool new apps.
And the feds are willing to put some money behind the project, called the “Apps4Tots Health Challenge.” The feds are offering $25,000 in prizes, with $17,500 going to the winner; $5,000 for the second-place finisher and $2,500 for third place.
An announcement for the app development contest is published in the Federal Register.
The challenge program's Web page is here.
The submission period ends May 20.
Text for Tots, or TXT4T, is a library of short, evidence-based messages focused on nutrition and physical activity. The library is targeted to parents and caregivers of children, ages 1-5 years, and is available in English and Spanish. Content for the messages was derived from the American Academy of Pediatrics' Bright Futures: Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children and Adolescents, which uses a developmentally based approach to address children's health needs in the context of family and community.
It's a follow-up program to the highly successful Text4Baby program focused on infants.
The TXT4Tots contest announcement follows an earlier, formal request for information published by HRSA in February.
Also this week in wireless gadgetry, displaying through Friday at the Hive, a showcase for entrepreneurs at the TEDMed conference in Washington, is GeckoCap, a device-, cloud- and game-based technology to promote compliant use of an asthma inhaler among children.
Colorful caps equipped with the latest Bluetooth 4.0 low-power transmission devices can be fitted on top of the child's inhaler. They flash at pre-programmed times to remind the child when its time to take a dose. The cap's on-board storage capability can hold up to a month's worth of date- and time-stamped data that's recorded whenever the child presses down to take a dose. The device automatically syncs up whenever it gets within about 100 feet of an authorized, Bluetooth 4.0-enabled smartphone carried by the child, his or her parents, a sibling or another authorized person. The data is then transmitted via the smartphone to the GeckoCap's storage system in the cloud, where games and displays can be created, stored and viewed by the child, parents, clinician or any other authorized person.
“We use the data where it is presented as a game for the child and the parents,” said Dr. Yechiel Engelhard, an Israeli physician, founder and CEO of the company. “Instead of getting the numbers, you get the nice graphs. If everything is OK, you see nothing other than an avatar that's smiling.”
Battery life on the caps is about nine months, long enough for a cap to last through three inhalers, if all three remain in the child's possession through their normal use, Engelhard said. “We know about half of the inhalers are being lost.”
Caps with dead batteries can be sent back to the company for refurbishing, he said. The company is toying with pricing models. It had considered selling the caps, but now is looking at selling the devices along with the data service, with buyers including parents, health plans and inhaler manufacturers.
Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter: @MHJConn
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