Are You a Health Care Innovator?

The AHA is inviting members to become a change agent or health care disruptor—to solve real, complex health care problems and answer the strong demand for innovation in the field now. 

We’ve launched the Innovation Challenge to encourage AHA members to explore and rethink new ways to design and integrate care delivery, enhance the patient experience and lower costs. The AHA will recognize three challenge winners, with a top prize of $100,000, to help turn your ideas into reality.

Hospitals and health care systems face unprecedented challenges to improve quality of care, improve access, increase efficiency and lower costs. Under our present system, just doing our best or working harder is not enough. We need game-changing breakthroughs to drive better outcomes, improve the care experience and reduce the total cost of care for specific high-need, high-cost populations.

The AHA Innovation Challenge calls on the health care community to think bigger and bolder about ways we can achieve better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for the most vulnerable in our communities, including those with low incomes, the uninsured, minorities, young children, and older adults.

The Challenge aims to connect entrepreneurs, tech designers, data analysts and clinicians working on the front lines of health care. It’s an opportunity to bring together the most creative thinkers, catalyze ideas and explore new approaches for integrated care delivery and financing models for populations with complex needs.

So bring us your ideas. Let us test your new approaches. Let’s not just follow the trends, let’s lead them.

To find out more about the challenge and how to submit your proposal, visit aha.org/innovation-challenge. The Challenge is open only to AHA members and the deadline for submissions is May 31. Please note that the letters of support, demonstrating the value of the idea, to be submitted with the application may come from both internal and external partners. Three awards, funded by First American Healthcare Finance, The Roger G. Larson Memorial Endowment and the AHA’s Health Research & Educational Trust, will be presented at the AHA Leadership Summit in San Diego on July 27.

Jay Bhatt, D.O., is chief medical officer of the AHA and president of HRET.