PHR App Wins Latest Blue Button Innovation Challenge

An app to help cancer patients collect, view, and share their personal health data won first prize at the ONC’s Blue Button Innovation Challenge held in the Boston area late last month.  The ArmMe app allows users to visualize their journey through diagnosis and treatment while connecting them with their physicians and providing social networking with other cancer patients.  Student-run organization Tufts MedStart and MIT Hacking Medicine co-sponsored the event with the Office of the National Coordinator, trying to find innovative new ideas to make use of the popular and effective Blue Button patient data feature.

“The concept is that three days with the right people – designing people, programming people, financing people, medical people, medical students, MBA students – can result in a startup,” said Dr. Joe Jabre, Director of the MD/MBA Health Management Program at Tufts. “Globally speaking, if there is one single goal for this, it is to get people who have ideas to network with other people who can actually make the idea happen.”