By Rajiv Leventhal
Starting on Jan. 15, designers and developers can submit prototypes for a statewide patient portal where New Yorkers can access their personal health records.
The New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC), in partnership with Health 2.0, invites designers and developers to participate in the Patient Portal for New Yorkers Design Challenge with $25,000 in prizes. The top portal interface designs will be chosen and voted upon by New Yorkers after the April 11th deadline. To guarantee patient privacy during the design challenge, developers and designers will be given a test patient data set to build their applications; they will not have access to actual health records. Once all of the submissions are received on April 11th, the New York public will be invited to vote on their favorite designs from April 11-21. The designs with the strongest responses will be invited to present their project at two different demo days, and a winner will be announced shortly thereafter. At that point, NYeC will work with a vendor to build the portal and run it on behalf of the state of New York via its health information exchange (HIE) network.
“This is a chance for developers and designers to advance healthcare for all 20 million New Yorkers. A portal of this size and scope has never before existed,” David Whitlinger, executive director of NYeC said in a statement. “Through our Design Challenge, we hope to inspire applicants to develop truly creative and user-friendly applications. We look forward to seeing all submissions, and eventually building this portal so patients throughout the state have full access to their health records.”
The patient portal mock-ups are required to include features that will allow patients to log on with a username and password to see their health records online safely and securely. Once logged in, patients will see a full layout of their health records, and also have access to a list of medical professionals, such as their family doctor, who have accessed their health records. The Patient Portal for New Yorkers will also provide an extensive overview of patient privacy rights and address any privacy concerns a patient might have about electronic medical records (EMRs) and health IT in general, NYeC says.