Help Design a Health Literate Mobile App - healthfinder.gov App Challenge

How can a mobile app help health consumers make informed health decisions based on healthfinder.gov’s information about services covered under the health reform law, also called the Affordable Care Act (ACA)? How can healthfinder.gov mobile content be tailored for users with limited health literacy? HHS is challenging developers to answer these questions - using public input and feedback from you! - while competing for a grand prize of $50,000!

The US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as an advisor, is challenging teams of developers and health professionals/health consumers to co-design a mobile app that can be used to access customized decision support for preventive services and wellness information from healthfinder.gov.

For more information, visit http://challenge.gov/HHS/454-healthfinder-gov-mobile-app-challenge.

Comments

What a great contest! Anyone who is interested in this contest should check out the results of a recent Helath Literacy Hackathon put on by CommunicateHeatlh. (Click on the "Discussions" tab here on the Health Literacy Community and look for the discussion about the hackathon!) There are some good ideas that could help you to think about this.

Silje, are there any demo apps or anything else that prospective participants could look at, aside from Healthfinder.com itself?

Thanks for sharing that resource, Julie.

I can't really think of a related demo app, but the HHS Healthy People 2020 Leading Health Indicator App Challenge used health literacy as one of its bonus criteria. Those winning submissions (announced in April 2012) can be viewed here: http://www.health2con.com/devchallenge/healthy-people-2020-leading-health-indicators-app-challenge/

However, as healthfinder.gov is grounded in health literacy and plain language principles, that will be a highly weighted criterion for this new challenge. Developers have been asked to use a crowd sourcing platform called Health Tech Hatch (think Kickstarter, but for Health IT) to gather input and feedback from the public.

We encourage you to check back every so often to see what app ideas are being submitted, and provide your feedback! Developers will be expected to incorporate this feedback into their final submissions.