KBCore Wins ONC ‘Investing in Innovation’ Challenge: Patient Safety Reporting Systems

Over the past several weeks, many of us at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and Food and Drug Administration have been evaluating the submissions for the Reporting Patient Safety Events Challenge. KBCore of Houston was selected the winner of the challenge—and the recipient of the $50,000 prize—because the company’s patient safety reporting system best fit the criteria of the challenge to find and reduce the risks associated with patient care. Right now, finding risks through the reporting of adverse events is slow because paper-based systems may be hard to read and require transmission by fax machines. By modernizing the patient safety reporting system through the use of computer-based applications we can better shed light on medical errors and augment the discovery of new patient safety hazards more timely and efficiently.

Reporting Patient Safety Events Challenge Submissions
The Challenge submissions were evaluated on a variety of criteria to determine which would potentially improve reporting of adverse events the most. The applications were required to make it easier to file an adverse event report using AHRQ’s Common Formats while allowing for:

• The inclusion of additional information during the initial submission and from a follow-up investigation;
• Import of relevant electronic health record or personal health record information, including screenshots; and
• Ability to submit reports to various entities including PSOs, FDA, and other health oversight organizations.

IDinc and Shands Healthcare finished in second place, while third place went to MidasPlus. They will receive $15,000 and $5,000, respectively.

About the Reporting Patient Safety Events Challenge
The Reporting Patient Safety Events Challenge, launched April 12, 2012, called on developers to create an application that would simplify internal incident reporting of adverse health care events, expand the utility of reports among all of the care team, and increase the volume and accuracy of reports to the patient safety reporting system. These reports allow Patient Safety Organizations  and providers to collect, aggregate, and analyze data, ultimately improving the safety of health care by identifying and reducing the risks associated with patient care.

The Winning Application
The winning application, KBCoreSM, uses unified web and mobile apps to collect and analyze event reports through a variety of functionalities. An analytical module integrates into and extracts data from electronic health records  and device and medication databases as well as scanned barcodes, such as those on a patient’s wristband. KBCoreSM uses an HL7 interface to extract relevant data from the electronic health record (as a CCD document), institutional databases, and a medication database, which can be used to populate the reports. Users can choose to submit a fully identified or an anonymous report. The application’s health information exchange platform enables secure communication between health professionals and organizations.

The Patient Safety Reporting challenge is just one of the challenges that have been launched under ONC’s Investing in Innovation program. This program uses prizes and challenges to facilitate innovation and obtain solutions to intractable health IT problems.