[Federal Register Volume 78, Number 107 (Tuesday, June 4, 2013)]
[Notices]
[Pages 33419-33421]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2013-13128]


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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES


Announcement of Requirements and Registration for ``Blue Button 
Co-Design Challenge''

AGENCY: Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information 
Technology, HHS.

ACTION: Notice.

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    Award Approving Official: Farzad Mostashari, National Coordinator 
for Health Information Technology.
SUMMARY: Blue Button Plus represents the technical standards and policy 
levers that help patients make use of their clinical and financial data 
in technology such as personal health records and health apps. All 
patients whose providers use Meaningful Use Stage 2 certified 
technology have the ability to view, download, and securely transmit 
their clinical data from their provider's Electronic Health Record into 
another product or holding place of their choice. This is an enormous 
opportunity for patient-facing, data receiver applications that 
previously struggled to collect complete and accurate clinical data 
without manual patient entry.
    As part of the Department of Health and Human Services digital 
services strategy, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health 
Information Technology (ONC) is launching the Blue Button Co-Design 
Challenge, intended to increase the number of priority patient-facing 
applications able to receive clinical data via Blue Button Plus. The 
Challenge will also uniquely engage the patient community to teach us 
what patients most want to do with their clinical data by crowdsourcing 
application ideas and incorporating patients in product design.
    The Blue Button Co-Design Challenge builds upon previous ONC 
activities to support consumer health and patient access to their data. 
These include Challenges such as Blue Button for All Americans, the 
Blue Button Mash Up Challenge, and the Health Design Challenge.
    The statutory authority for this challenge competition is Section 
105 of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (Pub. L. 111-
358).

DATES: Patient Applications category:

 June 3: Challenge announced at Health DataPalooza
 August 5: End of Patient Applications submission period
 September: Announce Patient Applications winners

    Open Source Developer Tools category:

 June 3: Challenge announced at Health DataPalooza
 July 8: End of Developer Tools submission period
 July 22-26: Announce Developer Tools winners

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Adam Wong, 202-720-2866.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

Subject of Challenge Competition

    The goals of the Blue Button Co-Design Challenge are:
     Build support for Blue Button Plus by engaging three 
crucial communities:
    a. Patients through crowd sourcing of application ideas, co-design, 
and public voting on winning products

[[Page 33420]]

    b. Companies and application builders through a public competition 
and prize money
    c. Developers by rewarding open source developer tools that make it 
easier to build Blue Button Plus enabled applications
     Expand our understanding of how patients want to use their 
clinical data, and what products they want to see developed.
     Increase the number of fully enabled, Blue Button Plus 
tools and applications in areas of high priority for patients.
    In order to accomplish these goals, the challenge will award prizes 
in two separate categories:
    1. The Patient Applications category will use crowd sourced 
application ideas as the topics for application development. From the 
launch of the challenge to June 7, anyone may post ideas for 
applications (no more than 75 words), focusing on the use of patient 
data enabled by Blue Button, on the ideation forum. Concurrently, the 
public will have until June 11 to vote on their favorite ideas, the top 
three of which will be announced as the topics for the patient 
applications and integrated into the submission review criteria. 
Submissions must be posted on a co-design Web site where entrants will 
participate in the co-design process, incorporating public input and 
feedback with potential end users, patients, and patient advocates. 
First, second, and third place awards will be given to the three best 
applications.
    To be eligible to receive a prize, applications submitted must:
     Demonstrate use of Blue Button Plus to receive patient 
clinical or financial data into an existing or new application
     Display the Blue Button logo
     Include a slide deck that describes how patients would use 
this application, which of the crowdsourced product ideas inspired this 
application, and how patient co-design impacted the final product.
    2. The Open Source Developer Tools category is intended to ease the 
implementation of Blue Button Plus for future applications, and engage 
developers around standards such as consolidated CDA and DIRECT. Three 
winners will receive awards and the winning tools will be made 
available through open source licenses.

Eligibility Rules for Participating in the Competition

    To be eligible to win a prize under this challenge, an individual 
or entity--
    (1) Shall have registered to participate in the competition under 
the rules promulgated by the Office of the National Coordinator for 
Health Information Technology.
    (2) Shall have complied with all the requirements under this 
section.
    (3) In the case of a private entity, shall be incorporated in and 
maintain a primary place of business in the United States, and in the 
case of an individual, whether participating singly or in a group, 
shall be a citizen or permanent resident of the United States.
    (4) May not be a Federal entity or Federal employee acting within 
the scope of their employment.
    (5) Shall not be an HHS employee working on their applications or 
submissions during assigned duty hours.
    (6) Shall not be an employee of Office of the National Coordinator 
for Health IT.
    (7) Federal grantees may not use Federal funds to develop COMPETES 
Act challenge applications unless consistent with the purpose of their 
grant award.
    (8) Federal contractors may not use Federal funds from a contract 
to develop COMPETES Act challenge applications or to fund efforts in 
support of a COMPETES Act challenge submission.
    An individual or entity shall not be deemed ineligible because the 
individual or entity used Federal facilities or consulted with Federal 
employees during a competition if the facilities and employees are made 
available to all individuals and entities participating in the 
competition on an equitable basis.
    Entrants must agree to assume any and all risks and waive claims 
against the Federal Government and its related entities, except in the 
case of willful misconduct, for any injury, death, damage, or loss of 
property, revenue, or profits, whether direct, indirect, or 
consequential, arising from my participation in this prize contest, 
whether the injury, death, damage, or loss arises through negligence or 
otherwise.
    Entrants must also agree to indemnify the Federal Government 
against third party claims for damages arising from or related to 
competition activities.

Registration Process for Participants

    To register for this challenge participants can access either the 
http://www.challenge.gov Web site and search for the challenge's title, 
or the ONC Investing in Innovation Challenge Web site at http://www.health2con.com/devchallenge/challenges/onc-i2-challenges/.

Amount of the Prize

 Total prizes: $50,000
 Patient Applications:
    [cir] First Place: $20,000
    [cir] Second Place: $10,000
    [cir] Third Place: $5,000
 Developer Tools: $5,000 each to the three best solutions

    Awards may be subject to Federal income taxes and HHS will comply 
with IRS withholding and reporting requirements, where applicable.

Payment of the Prize

    Prize will be paid by contractor.

Basis Upon Which Winner Will Be Selected

    The review panel will make selections based upon the following 
criteria:
Open Source Developer Tools
 Code readability, maintainability, and extensibility
 Quality of code documentation
 Value added by the tool
    The winners of the Patient Applications category will be determined 
by a combination of the review panel (two-thirds) and public voting 
(one-third); public voting will be enabled on the co-design site upon 
closing of the submission period on August 5.
Patient Applications
 Innovative use and integration of Blue Button Plus
 Innovative use of Blue Button patient data
 Application design and ease-of-use
 Relevance to crowd-sourced ideas and participation in co-
design

    In order for an entry to be eligible to win this Challenge, it must 
meet the following requirements:
    1. General--Contestants must provide continuous access to the 
application, a detailed description of the application, instructions on 
how to install and operate the application, and system requirements 
required to run the application (collectively, ``Submission'').
    2. Blue Button Plus--Blue Button Plus must be fully enabled within 
the application, and the Blue Button logo displayed.
    3. HHS, ONC logo--The tool must not use HHS' or ONC's logos or 
official seals in the Submission, and must not claim endorsement.
    4. Acceptable platforms--The tool must be designed for use with 
existing web, mobile, voice, electronic health record, or other 
platform for supporting interactions of the content provided with other 
capabilities.

[[Page 33421]]

    5. Section 508 Compliance--Contestants must acknowledge that they 
understand that, as a pre-requisite to any subsequent acquisition by 
FAR contract or other method, they may be required to make their 
proposed solution compliant with Section 508 accessibility and 
usability requirements at their own expense. Any electronic information 
technology that is ultimately obtained by HHS for its use, development, 
or maintenance must meet Section 508 accessibility and usability 
standards. Past experience has demonstrated that it can be costly for 
solution-providers to ``retrofit'' solutions if remediation is later 
needed. The HHS Section 508 Evaluation Product Assessment Template, 
available at http://www.hhs.gov/web/508/contracting/technology/vendors.html, provides a useful roadmap for developers to review. It is 
a simple, web-based checklist utilized by HHS officials to allow 
vendors to document how their products do or do not meet the various 
Section 508 requirements.
    6. Functionality/Accuracy--A Submission may be disqualified if the 
application fails to function as expressed in the description provided 
by the user, or if the application provides inaccurate or incomplete 
information.
    7. Security--Submissions must be free of malware. Contestant agrees 
that ONC may conduct testing on the application to determine whether 
malware or other security threats may be present. ONC may disqualify 
the application if, in ONC's judgment, the application may damage 
government or others' equipment or operating environment.

Additional Information

    Ownership of intellectual property is determined by the following:
     Patient Application category entrants retain title and 
full ownership in and to their submission. Entrants expressly reserve 
all intellectual property rights not expressly granted under the 
challenge agreement.
     Developer Tools category entrants are required to post 
their tools on GitHub to be made available via open source.
     By participating in the challenge, each entrant hereby 
irrevocably grants to Sponsor and Administrator a limited, non-
exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license and right to reproduce, 
publically perform, publically display, and use the Submission to the 
extent necessary to administer the challenge, and to publically perform 
and publically display the Submission, including, without limitation, 
for advertising and promotional purposes relating to the challenge.

    Authority: 15 U.S.C. 3719

    Dated: May 28, 2013.
Farzad Mostashari,
National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
[FR Doc. 2013-13128 Filed 6-3-13; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4150-45-P