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This past weekend, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital brought together software designers and developers from around the city and country for InnovateNYP, New York's first hospital-focused hackathon. Seventeen teams worked around the clock to develop an innovation that would enhance and improve myNYP, the hospital's online patient portal, which allows patients to track their health records, coordinate doctors' appointments, and more.

After two days of hacking, the teams presented their ideas to a panel of influential leaders in health care technology: Cyrus Massoumi, founder and CEO of ZocDoc; Mario Schlosser, co-founder and co-CEO, Oscar; Scott Schwaitzberg, Civic Innovation, Google; Brad Weinberg, founding partner, Blueprint Health; and NYP's chief information officer, Aurelia Boyer. The judges assessed each team's innovation on its ability to improve patient engagement and the patient experience at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

Results

• First place ($50,000 prize): Team name: Health Warriors; Application name: "PresbyHangouts." The winning platform accesses the hospital's current portal to allow inpatients to connect with other patients with common interests, allowing them to play games together and communicate through instant messaging and video chat. It aims to build patient community and provide a vehicle to deliver educational material through video chat. Team members were Hannah Oppenheimer of Brooklyn; Michael Wenger of Hoboken, New Jersey; Andrea Cremese of Brooklyn; Eric Chen of Manhattan; and Dan Firepine, an emergency room physician from Berkeley, California.
• Second place ($25,000 prize): Team name: Bogney; Application name: "Intermed." This two-man team aimed to address the isolation and anxiety many patients face while in the hospital by creating an app that allows patients to connect with other patients and "mentors" based on interests or condition, connect with friends and family through social networks and access tools that promote relaxation and meditation, such as calming music. Team members were Stanislav Bogdanov and John Kinney, both of Long Island, New York.
• Third place ($10,000 prize): Team name: Some Team; Application name: "Presbyterian Plus." Shahnar and Fahm Sikder, two brothers from Queens, New York, aimed to improve the patient experience by developing a platform that streamlines the appointment check-in process and provides a patient support and reward system for healthy activities, such as scheduling and showing up for doctor appointments and keeping track of medication schedules.

In total, InnovateNYP awarded $85,000 in cash and prizes. All submissions can be viewed at http://innovatenyp.challengepost.com/.

"We saw a number of creative and well-executed ideas at InnovateNYP, so picking only three winners was extremely difficult," said Aurelia Boyer, senior vice president and chief information officer, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. "Our plan now is to reach out to all of the participants with innovative concepts to continue to engage and learn more about how they could potentially help patients at NewYork-Presbyterian."

Many of the ideas presented at InnovateNYP will be evaluated for possible integration into the myNYP platform. Introduced in 2009 using Microsoft's HealthVault and Amalga technologies, myNYP consolidates and organizes information such as medication history, surgery reports, hospital discharge instructions, laboratory and radiology records, immunization history, allergy information, doctor and insurance information, and emergency contacts. By providing a simple and convenient way to manage personal health, myNYP empowers patients to take an informed and active role in their health care. MyNYP is available free of charge to all NYP patients.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, based in New York City, is one of the nation's largest and most comprehensive hospitals, with some 2,600 beds. In 2012, the Hospital had nearly 2 million inpatient and outpatient visits, including 12,758 deliveries and 275,592 visits to its emergency departments. NewYork-Presbyterian's 6,144 affiliated physicians and 20,154 staff provide state-of-the-art inpatient, ambulatory and preventive care in all areas of medicine at six major centers: NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian/The Allen Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Westchester Division and NewYork-Presbyterian/Lower Manhattan Hospital. One of the most comprehensive health care institutions in the world, the Hospital is committed to excellence in patient care, research, education and community service. NewYork-Presbyterian is the #1 hospital in the New York metropolitan area and is consistently ranked among the best academic medical institutions in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report. The Hospital has academic affiliations with two of the nation's leading medical colleges: Weill Cornell Medical College and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.