AHRQ announces winner of CDS Challenge Contest

ROCKVILLE, Md. - May 1, 2024 - PRLog -- Rockville, MD — The Health Co-Lab has won the AHRQ Challenge on "Designing the Optimal Future State of CDS Connect", a strategic platform launched in 2016 to incorporate patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) findings into clinical practice through digital clinical decision support (CDS).

CDS is a technology designed to improve clinical decision-making by using patient data alongside broader health information to provide clinicians, staff, and patients with intelligently filtered knowledge at appropriate times.

The competition was structured in two phases, in the first, participants were asked to develop a design proposal addressing a set of technical questions laid out by AHRQ, focusing on how to enhance the functionality, accessibility, and value of artifacts that support digital CDS. The Health Co-Lab delivered an impressive proposal that focused on how to drive community development of future CDS artifacts, adhere to standard programming language, and leverage advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to improve the creation and enhancement of CDS artifacts.

In the second phase, The Health Co-Lab refined their initial model and presented it to a panel of AHRQ experts. Their detailed presentation highlighted how the Federal government could effectively integrate with commercial markets already driving most of the country's CDS development process and how A.I. could be used to streamline the development process of CDS tools and reinforce standardized approaches to artifact development.

"It's a great honor to be recognized and we're very thankful for the opportunity to be able to compete with the other very talented organizations that submitted proposals under this Challenge." Sean Lunde, a Principle at the Health Co-Lab and a Challenge team member said. "CDS is at an inflection point and ensuring the Federal government has an appropriate role that balances the need to preserve innovation and ensure adherence to evidence-bases and programming standards is critical as this technology continues to roll out across thousands of electronic medical records nationwide."

This initiative is part of AHRQ's broader strategy to support a portfolio of projects and research that transform healthcare findings into actionable, cutting-edge clinical practice. CDS Connect has grown since its inception, adding tools and resources to support the dissemination and implementation of PCOR findings, making CDS more shareable, standards-based, and publicly available.

The Health Co-Lab received a $25,000 prize for its winning submission.

About The Health Co-Lab

The Health Co-Lab, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business, is dedicated to finding innovative solutions to intractable healthcare problems. The Health Co-Lab works with public sector programs like Medicare and Medicaid, as well as healthcare delivery systems and community based organizations to improve care across the continuum.