Challenge Goal
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how we access and provide care, exacerbated the racial and income inequalities in healthcare, and impacted the wellbeing of our healthcare providers. We launched this Challenge to find digital health solutions that support healthcare providers and health systems in facing new challenges to providing care.
Program Overview
Eight finalists were selected for a ten-week accelerator program run by Lever. During the accelerator, the finalists were assessed on their testing and validation needs and matched with members of the MA Digital Health Sandbox Network, a group of cutting-edge research and development organizations supporting digital health companies. Participants worked with their Sandbox partners to scope detailed six-month testing and validation projects.
Winner Announced!
On Monday, June 27, 2022, a panel of judges selected Slumber One as the grand prize winner of the Innovations to Support Healthcare Providers COVID-19 Recovery Challenge. Based in Boston, Slumber One has developed a highly scalable digital therapeutic for insomnia that patients can use to fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. Slumber One received a $100,000 grant to work with the Brigham Digital Innovation Hub (iHub), a member of the Massachusetts Digital Health Sandbox Network. The iHub will support a research partnership between a Brigham and Women’s Hospital principal investigator and Slumber One to conduct a clinical trial demonstrating the immediate and sustained efficacy of the Slumber One product and exploring whether the intervention is applicable for a diverse and representative demographic.
Runners Up
The three runners-up in the Challenge each received $50,000 grants to work with their Sandbox partners.
BurnCam Medical (Allston, MA)
BurnCam Medical provides access to burn unit experts, bringing human and AI experts to the patient’s bedside with a smartphone-based telemedicine platform. BurnCam will work with Carelon’s Digital Data Sandbox and subject matter experts to access claims and outcomes data to validate BurnCam’s financial and medical value propositions and to evaluate the solution’s usability and accessibility.
HealthJay (Palo Alto, CA)
HealthJay is a telehealth operating system that has a suite of tablet, mobile, and web apps for patients and caregivers that transforms the current problems of connectivity, lack of equipment, and complicated literacy requirements that cause low usability in telehealth. HealthJay will work with MGH’s Medical Device Plug-and-Play Lab to develop medical device integration, cybersecurity, and system resilience strategies for their platform to enhance its capability in improving patients’ access to care and to be better integrated and deployed in current healthcare practices.
Outcome Referrals (Framingham, MA)
Outcome Referrals, Inc. has created the first proven referral process in healthcare. Their solution for connecting patients with therapists solves both the quality and access problems that are leaving a growing number of people without timely treatment. Outcome Referrals will work with MITRE’s subject matter experts and access their synthetic patient generator, Synthea, to develop a synthetic model to demonstrate the potential financial impact of Outcome Referrals’ work for organizations serving Dual Eligible/High Need-High Cost patient populations
Semi-Finalists
- ASP.MD (Cambridge, MA)
- EmPowerYu (Santa Clara, CA)
- Rocket Wellness (Wakefield, MA)