Skip to main content
Industry

Congratulations to our 2020 Health Innovation Award winners

For 17 years, Microsoft has honored innovations that advance the health industry. The 2020 Health Innovation Awards continue this tradition, with Microsoft customers and partners deploying solutions that deliver better experiences, insights, and care. Today more than ever, these powerful capabilities are needed by health organizations and professionals to enable personalized care, empower care teams, and improve operational outcomes. Our Microsoft Health and Life Sciences team congratulates the following winners for reimagining health care and achieving more for all of us. Please join us in recognizing this year’s honorees, which Andrea McGonigle and I announced today during our Microsoft Healthcare Summit. 

Award Category: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Bryan Medical Center and Ocuvera 

More than 1 million falls occur in U.S. hospitals every year, one-third of which result in additional injuries, extended stays, and more than 11,000 deaths. Bryan’s Acute Rehab unit partnered with Ocuvera seeking a cost-effective solution to reduce falls without compromising the mobility of patients who can walk. Leveraging the Azure Kinect depth camera and AI predictive technology, the Ocuvera system prevents patient falls while providing superior care 

Award Category: Empower Your Care Teams

PointClickCare and ThoughtWire 

Recognizing the needs of clinicians and teams providing complex care in long-term care facilities, PointClickCare partnered with ThoughtWire to create eConnect, a unified solution to access patient health information and empower care teams. Built on Microsoft Azure, eConnect offers Microsoft Azure Digital Twins, robotic process automation, and augmented intelligence capabilities to seamlessly integrate with the Electronic Medical Records system, creating a single source of truth for patient information.

Award Category: Enable Personalized Care

Dignity Health and Perficient  

Dignity partnered with Perficient to develop DignityHealth.org, a unified digital experience that can be personalized to provide an end-to-end experience for patients. DignityHealth.org required the migration of a 22-state network to a multi-tenant Sitecore platform hosted on Microsoft Azure to support customization, deployment, and improved search functionality. This innovation previously received the 2018 Sitecore Experience Award for “best use of Sitecore as a digital-experience platform.” 

Award Category: Reimagine Healthcare

Kaiser Permanente and BC Platforms 

Addressing the need to securely manage and analyze clinical and genetic data together, Kaiser Permanente Research Bank (KPRB) uses Microsoft Azure and BC Platforms’ solutions for a state-of-the-art research data platform and suite of genomics and general research analysis tools. The optimization, automation, and use of these interoperable tools by KPRB’s scientists delivers a fluidefficient and flexible means of targeting a research populationreducing duplication and expediting research cycles.  

Murfreesboro Medical Clinic & SurgiCenter (MMC) and 2bPrecise 

Responding to the challenges around pharmacogenomics (PGx) testing, Tennessee’s MMC adopted the 2bPrecise solution built on Microsoft Azure to ingest genomic data from the lab and integrate it with clinical information. This enables providers to see the complete patient picturedetermine the best medications, and achieve better results faster and with fewer side effects for patients. These integrated tools not only support long-term medication safety for patients and clinical efficiencies, but they also advance governance around ordering practices and eliminate duplicate testing. 

Award Category: Improve Operational Outcomes

EPAM  

Nearly one-third of clinical trial budgets is spent on patient recruitment and enrollment, but 37 percent of trials fail to meet enrollment targets, and more than 10 percent never enroll a single patient. EPAM, in conjunction with its client’s team, set out to prove the power of social media to impact patient outcomes. Using the power of EPAM’s iSwarm online patient engagement solution, the client was able to identify, reach, and influence target patient populations, empowering them to take control of their health and increase participation in appropriate clinical trials.   

Billings Clinic and Health Catalyst 

Billings Clinic’s heart failure, patient financial services, and analytics teams were challenged with a lack of trusted data to perform their work, stay lean, and focus on the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines best practices. Using Health Catalyst’s Data Operating System and Population Builder, the Billings Clinic’s analytics team enabled access to transparent, trusted, and actionable information to make clinical and financial improvements. Results included reduced mortality rates, authorization-related denials, and increased operational efficiency.  

Award Category: Protect Health Information

BehaVR and ClearDATA 

BehaVR uses the artificial intelligence and speech-to-text capabilities of Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services to conduct real-time sentiment analysis and voice-driven interactions inside virtual reality. To ensure these services are easy, fast, and highly secure, BehaVR partnered with ClearDATA to configure the necessary compliance controls at the start. The result allowed BehaVR to reach over 3,200 new patients across more than 100 additional clinical deployments, with 71 percent of patient-reported outcomes showing significant improvements in mobility, quality of life, and pain reduction. 

Sincere thanks to our distinguished judges 

Winners of the Microsoft Health Innovation Awards were selected by a distinguished group of judges. Our sincere thanks to these health leaders for their dedication in reviewing this year’s nominations, evaluating the technology, and determining the greatest value for patients and providers: 

  • Angela RossDNP, MPH, PMP, PHCNS-BC, LTC (retired) U.S. Army, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Informatics UTHealth School of Biomedical Informatics  
  • Ann Mond JohnsonCEO, American Telemedicine Association  
  • Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, MAMHSA, Health Economist and Advisor, THINK-Health and Health Populi blog 
  • Kelly Larrabee RobkeMBA, MS, RN, Vice President, Clinical Thought Leadership, BD Medication Management  
  • Shawna ButlerRN, MBA, Managing Director, Exponential Medicine  
  • Whende M. Carroll, MSN, RN-BC, Founder, Nurse Evolution 

Staying in touch

On behalf of Microsoft, I want to again congratulate this year’s award winners for their inspiring examples of commitmentexcellence, and innovation. We celebrate these health transformations and look forward to staying in touch through our health blogs, LinkedIn, and Twitter @Health_IT social channels