SAN FRANCISCO, CA — (Marketwire) — 09/26/11 — Health 2.0 () and Walgreens () today announced Chicago, Illinois-based Team mHealthCoach as the winner of the Walgreens Health Guide Challenge. The winners will receive a cash award of $25,000, plus an opportunity to spend an hour with Walgreens Chief Information Officer, Timothy Theriault. mHealthCoach will demonstrate their winning entry at the Health 2.0 Fall Conference taking place today and tomorrow, September 26 and 27, in San Francisco.
The Walgreens Health Guide Challenge launched in June at the Health Data Initiative Forum meeting in Washington, D.C., as part of the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge program (). Teams were tasked with developing an innovative application and a supported web service that would aggregate three or more Health and Human Services (HHS) databases by disease condition, topic and location.
The mHealthCoach team developed a sophisticated tablet-based application that incorporates data feeds from multiple health and social media sources in an easy-to-navigate interface. The mHealthCoach application will potentially enable Walgreens health care staff to quickly and easily provide pharmacy customers with useful and relevant health information.
“We were impressed by the application developed by the mHealthCoach team and we believe the tool they created could be easily incorporated into the pharmacy of the future,” said Colin Watts, Chief Innovation Officer at Walgreens. “The innovative approach used by the mHealthCoach team is absolutely aligned with Walgreens- broader innovation initiatives.”
“Health 2.0 is very excited to see the development of innovative technology solutions under the umbrella of the Developer Challenge program,” said Indu Subaiya, Chief Executive Officer at Health 2.0. “We believe that prize competitions can be a very effective tool to drive innovation at corporations and we look forward to more successful challenges like this one.”
Walgreens also awarded a second place prize to Florida-based Team Tuxemo and a third place prize to Connecticut-based Acsys Interactive. The winners will receive $5,000 and $3,000, respectively.
You can learn more details about the Walgreens Health Guide Challenge at the competition website () and you can also learn more about the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge at the main program website ().
The Health 2.0 Developer Challenge was launched on June 2, 2010 at the Community Health Data Initiative (CHDI) meeting at the IOM, with support from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The goal of the challenge is to bring the Health 2.0 Community together for rapid application development, both online and in physical code-a-thons. For more see.
Health 2.0 — The conference. The media network. The Innovation community. The Health 2.0 Conference is the leading showcase of cutting-edge technologies in health care, including Online Communities, Search and lightweight Tools for consumers to manage their health and connect to providers online. The Health 2.0 Developer Challenge is a series of prize competitions promoting health technology innovation. Health 2.0 also has its own media channels, Health 2.0 News and Health 2.0 TV; its own market intelligence service, Health 2.0 Advisors; and also sponsors the Health 2.0 Accelerator industry consortium. Health 2.0 was founded by Indu Subaiya & Matthew Holt in 2007 and is now a community of hundreds of organizations and thousands of innovators. For more information, see.
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Walgreens () is the nation-s largest drugstore chain with fiscal 2011 sales of $72 billion. The company operates 7,760 drugstores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Each day, Walgreens provides nearly 6 million customers the most convenient, multichannel access to consumer goods and services and trusted, cost-effective pharmacy, health and wellness services and advice in communities across America. Walgreens scope of pharmacy services include retail, specialty, infusion, medical facility and mail service, along with respiratory services. These services improve health outcomes and lower costs for payers including employers, managed care organizations, health systems, pharmacy benefit managers and the public sector. Take Care Health Systems is a Walgreens subsidiary that is the largest and most comprehensive manager of worksite health and wellness centers and in-store convenient care clinics, with more than 700 locations throughout the country.
Amendola Communications
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