Matches Made at Mid-West BluePrint Health IT Innovation Exchange Summit
Speed Dating Stats: 18 Matches—18 Follow-Ups Planned—2 Pilots Proposed

Ten early-stage health IT Innovator finalists met and matched with hospitals, major healthcare systems, and a health insurance company in speed dating and matching sessions in Indianapolis, Indiana on November 29, 2011. All eighteen matching sessions produced milestones to further evaluate potential for pilot and test-bed programs. Alan D. Snell, MD, MMM, Chief Medical Informatics Officer (CMIO) at St. Vincent Health and president of the Indiana HIMSS chapter, said "St. Vincent Health is interested in doing two pilots" with innovators that he met and matched with at the Innovation Exchange Summit. The sessions and milestones for real outcomes were the focus of the Mid-West BluePrint Health IT Innovation Exchange Summit.

“While the event was about matching provider organizations up with innovative companies, there was quite a bit of networking and strategic discussion among all participants,” said Andrew VanZee, MHA, FACHE, Indiana Statewide Health IT Director. VanZee welcomed hospital and provider participants to BluePrint’s Innovation Exchange Summit at University Place Conference Center & Hotel, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Hospital and providers came from Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, as well as New York and Pennsylvania. They were in search of matches with early-stage health IT Innovators. Finalist Innovators came from Arizona, Kansas, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

Applications for health IT innovators, hospitals, and sponsors are being accepted for the Western Region Summit which will be held in early 2012.

Preparing for a Day of Innovation
A pre-Summit Reception and Dinner on November 28 set the innovation stage for Hospital participants, Advisory Board Members, Special Guests, and Sponsors.  John Kansky, Vice President of Product Management at Indiana Health Information Exchange (HIE), Innovation Exchange Summit Advisory Board member, and Industry Sponsor, shared his thoughts on Innovation from an HIE perspective.  Kevin Carey and Jeff Jordahl from IBM spoke of how sponsor IBM applied innovation in health IT.  Ted Smith, Director of Innovation at Louisville Metro Government, and former Senior Advisor on Innovation with the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), presented the US Department of Health and Human Services and ONC perspective on championing innovation in the public and private sectors.

Hospitals and Providers
The Mid-West Summit Provider participants included St. Vincent Health (IN), a member of Ascension Health; Community Health Network (IN), Alegent Health (NE), Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (OH), TriHealth (OH), Hennepin County Medical Center (MN), Visiting Nurse Service of New York (NY); Highmark, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, based in Pittsburgh, PA; and a representative of rural hospitals.  Providers included 62 hospitals within their own organizations, and totaled more than 120 hospitals when including their parent organizations.  Providers were selected based on their history of innovation and their willingness to set and follow-up on milestones beyond the day of the Summit.

Health IT Innovators
Health IT innovator participants included EnableCare, LLC (KS), Health Business Intelligence Corp (AZ), iGetBetter, Inc. (MA), InVivoLink (TN), MedCPU (VA), Medical Image Mining Laboratories (NY), MedVentive (MA), Nuvon, Inc. (PA), Ringful LLC (TX), and SBR Health, Inc (MA). These Innovator Finalists were selected from an initial group of almost 40 Innovators applicants, who were required to complete an application focused on discovering early-stage Health IT Innovators with ready-to-install products or services but with a limited to small installed base of actual implementations. Twenty semi-finalists were selected by BluePrint’s Innovation Exchange Advisory Board and hospital participants, and then narrowed to the ten who would participate in Indianapolis.

Based on 15-minute speed dating sessions, conducted without digital demos or presentations, providers and Innovators ranked each other for potential partnerships from 1 to 10. Ratings were fed into the BluePrint algorithm for health IT matchmaking, and 18 matches were set. In the 25-minute matching sessions, where brief presentations or demos were allowed, providers and Innovators were asked to set milestones for next steps if the match appeared to be worthwhile. They either set dates and steps for next steps for further evaluation or plans to set up a pilot or test-bed opportunity.