End User Network

Our United States and locally based companies will offer United States market advice to The Challenge finalists. They may provide end user perspective feedback and pilot new ideas.

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is a 777-bed teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School located in the heart of Boston's renowned Longwood Medical Area. Along with its modern inpatient facilities, BWH boasts extensive outpatient services and clinics, neighborhood primary care health centers, state-of-the art diagnostic and treatment technologies and research laboratories. BWH formed in 1980 with the unprecedented merger of three of Boston's oldest and most prestigious Harvard teaching hospitals: the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital, and the Boston Hospital for Women. BWH's strength as an academic medical center continually evolves but stays true to its mission of the highest quality patient care and service, teaching the next generation of caregivers, and cutting-edge research and discovery. BWH is a founding member of Partners HealthCare System, the largest integrated health care delivery network in New England. A top recipient of research grants from the National Institutes of Health – with an annual research budget of more than $400 million – BWH is internationally known for its clinical, translational, bench, and population-based research studies, including the landmark Nurses Health Study, Physicians Health Studies, and the Women's Health Initiative. BWH employs more than 12,000 people; 3,000 physicians, fellows and residents; more than 1,000 researchers; and 2,800 nurses.

Fraser Health Authority

Fraser Health provides a wide range of integrated health care services to more than 1.5 million people living in British Columbia, Canada. The health authority manages a budget of $2.2 billion, with 23,000 employees, more than 5,000 volunteers and 2,300 physicians providing services.

Hudson Center for Health Equity & Quality

The Hudson Center for Health Equity & Quality (Hcheq) is an independent not-for-profit organization located on the banks of the Hudson River in Tarrytown, New York. The mission of Hcheq is to promote a humane, cost-effective, high quality health care system. Hcheq is an advocate for universal health care and other policies that broaden health care access, and a developer of information technologies to streamline the delivery of health care.

Kaiser Permanente

Founded in 1945, Oakland, California-based Kaiser Permanente is the nation’s largest not-for-profit integrated health care system with 14,000 physicians, 160,000 employees, 32 medical centers, 421 medical offices, 8.7 million health plan members in 10 states, and annual revenues of $38 billion. It encompasses the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, and the Permanente Medical Groups.

Dr. Yan Chow is Associate Director of Kaiser Permanente (KP) Information Technology’s new Innovation & Advanced Technology Group (IAT). IAT evaluates new and emerging health care information technologies that will impact the mainstream in the next 2 to 5 years. Dr. Chow has had a successful clinical practice at KP for 26 years. For 10 of those years, he was involved in regional IT management, successfully overseeing a number of operational systems, including enterprise email, reference databases, and CIPS, the primary system used by 58,000 providers in 60 dispersed sites to manage schedules, labs, radiology results, medications, and immunizations. Dr. Chow has founded and advised a number of startups in the Internet, health care technology, storage, and database spaces. In 2004 he was awarded 3 U.S. patents for co-inventing a network storage architecture 2 orders of magnitude faster than competitive designs. He also developed commercial database software that accelerated very large database (VLB) processing 240-fold. Dr. Chow earned his A.B. with honors from Harvard University and his M.D. from the University of California at San Diego. He received his MBA from the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in 2005, where he graduated as valedictorian.

Northwest Physicians Network

Northwest Physicians Network (NPN) is the largest association of independent physicians in the Northwest of the USA. NPN currently has more than 470 practitioners who represent a wide spectrum of specialties. Twenty five percent of NPN's health care providers are general practitioners. NPN is focused on improving the health of communities and optimizing patient-physician relationships. www.npnwa.net

Palo Alto Medical Foundation

The Palo Alto Medical Foundation for Health Care, Research and Education is a not-for-profit health care organization that is a pioneer in the multispecialty group practice of medicine. PAMF is part of the Sutter Health family of not-for-profit hospitals and physician organizations that share resources and expertise to advance health care quality. Serving more than 100 communities in Northern California, Sutter Health is a regional leader in cardiac care as well as care of women and children, and is a pioneer in advanced patient safety technology. The Foundation has three health care divisions: The Palo Alto Division, the Camino Division and the Santa Cruz Division. Today, the merged physician group operates as a single employer with more than 900 physicians serving more than 600,000 patients. We are currently working to complete the integration of our clinical, administrative and technical systems. Plans are already underway to implement seamless access to care across the PAMF network and include adoption of a single electronic health record that will enable retrieval of patient information from any PAMF facility throughout Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz Counties.

Partners HealthCare Systems

Partners HealthCare was founded in 1994 by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Partners is an integrated health care system that offers patients a continuum of coordinated high-quality care. The system includes primary care and specialty physicians, community hospitals, the two founding academic medical centers, specialty facilities, community health centers, and other health-related entities. Partners HealthCare is a non-profit organization.

The Partners IT based Innovation Program was initiated in 2004 with a goal to foster forward thinking, agility and cross-functional relationships. More than five years later, the program has influenced real-world business solutions that have the potential to change the way Partners IT operates as a department. The program is offered annually and exposes selected participants to industry thought leaders, site visits and relationship-building opportunities.

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC)

UPMC is the premier health system in western Pennsylvania and one of the most renowned academic medical centers in the United States. During the past decade, UPMC has reshaped the health care landscape in western Pennsylvania. As a $7 billion organization and the region's largest employer, it has transformed the economic landscape as well. With a team of about 50,000 employees, UPMC serves the health needs of more than 4 million people each year, improving lives in western Pennsylvania - and beyond - through redefined models of health care delivery and superb clinical outcomes. UPMC Health Plan has nearly 1.3 million group health insurance, Medicare, CHIP, Medical Assistance, behavioral health, employee assistance and workers' compensation members receiving the best health care from the region's premier provider.

University of South Alabama Center for Strategic Health Innovation

The University of South Alabama Center for Strategic Health Innovation (USA CSHI) is a nationally recognized leader in innovative healthcare technology applications and e-creation, development, and deployment of healthcare technology platforms, as well as the delivery of advanced preparedness teaching and training. USA CSHI activity focuses on two major fronts; health information technology and research to improve quality and decrease costs of medical care provided to patients, providers, and payers and to be a national leader in disaster preparedness. In the future, look for CSHI to play a role in developing high performance computing models that integrate social science data with medical data to drive fundamental changes in our ability to create a truly personalized health care delivery system.

Vanderbilt University

The Vanderbilt Center for Better Health (VCBH) provides advisory services, conducts sponsored research, and formulates new approaches to our client’s challenges using fact-based methods to address the question: Which next improvement will substantially increase health, safety, quality and outcomes, while decreasing total cost?

Mark Frisse serves as Director of Regional Informatics Programs through the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health and as Professor in the Vanderbilt Department of Biomedical Informatics. In his work at the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health, he is responsible for coordinating regional, state, and national projects aimed at the application of information technology to advance patient care. His primary focus is on developing a state-wide health information infrastructure to support TennCare patients and on developing a regional demonstration in the Memphis area. He has also served as a healthcare information technology consultant and as Chief Medical Officer of Express Scripts, one of the nation's leading pharmacy benefits management companies.

Auckland DHB

Auckland DHB’s health care system includes a range of services from health promotion and problem prevention work through to the secondary and specialist services provided by our hospital. The total value of services is approximately $1,054 million for the Auckland DHB population. Some funding for services comes directly from the Ministry of Health, e.g. public health services. Auckland DHB also provides services for other DHBs to the value of $624 million.

More information on all of Auckland DHB hospital and related services is available at http://www.healthpoint.co.nz

Canterbury DHB

The Canterbury DHB is responsible for the funding and provision of public health and disability services in the Canterbury region. The statutory objectives of the Canterbury District Health Board are to improve, promote and protect the health of communities; to promote the integration of health services, especially primary and secondary care services, and to promote effective care or support of those in need of personal health services or disability support. The Canterbury District Health Board is also expected to show a sense of social responsibility, to foster community participation in health improvement, and to uphold the ethical and quality standards commonly expected of providers of services and public sector organisations.

Counties Manukau District Health Board (CMDHB)

CMDHB is responsible for the funding of health and disability services and for the provision of hospital and related services for the people of Counties Manukau. CMDHB aims to work in partnership with its communities to improve the health status of all, with particular emphasis on Māori and Pacific peoples and other communities with health disparities.

One of the core outcomes CMDHB is seeking to achieve over the next five years is to improve the capacity of the health sector to deliver quality services. To meet that goal CMDHB is developing a Centre for Health Services Innovation which will serve as a centre for healthcare capability building and will foster health innovation in New Zealand and its translation into healthcare practice. This centre is a joint venture involving Counties Manukau District Health Board (CMDHB), the University of Auckland, Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT) and AUT University.