Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital has announced the winners of its international contest to seek innovative solutions to treating diabetes in a rural population. The contest was initiated with the launch of www.Mission2EndDiabetes.org web site in December 2008 which invited entrepreneurs, inventors and researchers from around the world to win cash awards for developing and submitting proposals for programs with an annual budget of no more than $200,000 that could evaluate, diagnose and treat diabetes in a rural area such as central Louisiana while tracking results and outcomes.
The winning proposals are:
First Place ($20,000 award)
Button Systems Incorporated, Vermont – Peter Schickler, CEO. Button Systems’ chronic disease management experience relies upon a registry with key patient data elements that, when collected, form the basis of the follow-up and analytical reporting. The reports help providers identify and intervene with patients at the point-of-care who are most likely to develop costly, debilitating, diabetes-related complications.
Second Place
Contagion Health, LLC, San Francisco, California – Jen McCabe, CEO. Contagion Health utilizes a custom build platform, white label version of the socially contagious virtual, web-based healthy decision platform currently in live beta at http://getupandmove.me. This allows a social networking solution that utilizes “social interventions” in the form of person-to-person “challenges” to motivate healthier behaviors.
Third Place
DiabetesRX, Baton Rouge, Louisiana – Calvin Young – Managing Principle Investigator. DiabetesRX utilizes a mathematical chronic disease model known as Archimedes targeting a rural at-risk population. This will aid in a diabetes education, prevention and management program examining biomedical, psycho-social and lifestyle measures.
Partial funding for implementation of the winning proposal was provided by the Foundation of the Mid South which awarded Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital a three year grant of $150,000.
The competition was open for eighteen months and was promoted through social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as diabetic websites and online medical and business journals. “In the medical field, we tend to think of using the resources within our community,” says Stephen F. Wright, President and CEO of Christus Health regions in Louisiana, “but why can’t we take a problem and say to the world, ‘help us solve this problem?’ We wanted to see if there were people out there, not necessarily medical professionals that would come up with innovative approaches.”
“What I think we are seeing is a smart and practical way to leverage the amazing technology we have today,” said Dr. Francis Kong, an expert in the fields of biotechnology research and computer technology. “Christus Cabrini can now customize a solution for its exact needs with a hand selected team of experts who are as passionate about their technologies as they are about making a real difference in healthcare.” Dr. Kong was one of the six judges for the contest.
The diabetes programs implemented from the submissions will provide medical resources for health care. Additionally, the programs will promote healthy behaviors and provide programs to reduce diabetes and obesity in the rural areas in central Louisiana.
Peter Schickler, CEO of Button System stated, “We are honored that Christus Health selected the proposal submitted by Button Systems as the winner of the diabetes competition. We are very excited about working with the staff of Christus Health to implement our software in the Louisiana area. We will do everything in our power to insure that the patients with chronic diseases benefit from the affects of our software product.”
More information about the contest may be found on the Christus St. Frances Cabrini website, www.cabrini.org.
