The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services revealed a new contest aimed at accelerating solutions that can predict health outcomes and improve patients’ quality of care.
CMS has partnered with the American Academy of Family Physicians and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to award up to $1.65 million to selected participants in the competition.
Dubbed the CMS Artificial Intelligence Health Outcomes Challenge, it seeks to engage with innovators from various sectors, not just healthcare. For participants, the ultimate goal of the three-stage challenge is to develop AI-driven tools that providers taking part in CMS Innovation Center models can use.
During the Launch Stage of the contest, interested parties can submit an application through ai.cms.gov. The deadline to submit is June 18, 2019.
After that time, up to 20 participants will be selected for Stage 1 of the competition. During Stage 1, they will design and test their solution utilizing certain Medicare claims data sets.
Up to five participants will then advance to Stage 2 and will each win up to $80,000. In the second stage, innovators will be allowed to request additional Medicare claims data and refine their tools.
The winner of Stage 2 will get up to $1 million, while the runner up will be awarded up to $250,000. As of right now, CMS intends to announce the winner in April 2020.
“The Artificial Intelligence Health Outcomes Challenge is an opportunity for innovators to demonstrate how artificial intelligence tools — such as deep learning and neural networks — can be used to predict unplanned hospital and skilled nursing facility admissions and adverse events,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. “For artificial intelligence to be successful in healthcare, it must not only enhance the predictive ability of illnesses and diseases, but also enable providers to focus more time with patients. The power of artificial intelligence will truly be unleashed when providers understand and trust the data and predictions.”
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