The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT which introduced The Certified Health IT Product List Data Challenge in the last week, has initiated a contest for innovative ideas that highlights how its vast and meticulous specs can enhance service to hospitals and health systems.

This list includes every technology product checked and verified by the office’s Health IT Certification Program, thereby containing scrupulous and humongous data.

The data comprises of detailed information pertaining to all the categories under which the products are certified, the usability test results and reports of any non-compliance, and any consequential remedial action plans undertaken by the vendors. There are more than 300 listings for active 2015 Edition certified IT products.

Steven Posnack, director of ONC's Office of Standards and Technology, and his colleagues wrote in a blog post, "In the past, much of the testing and certification data was unstructured, making an analysis of that data difficult. In 2016, to allow CHPL users to have better access to the data, ONC updated the CHPL with structured data and discrete formats. For users who want greater access to the data, the CHPL has a set of application programming interfaces and downloadable XML files containing the complete data available."

Now ONC is welcoming new ways to make use of that organized data for IT decision-makers at hospitals and practices.

The new CHPL Data Challenge is inviting developers and data experts to design innovative approaches that will enable an easy access for providers to utilize and examine this data.

$40,000 will be given in prizes to those who succeed in developing new apps that render the data usable and can perform a live demo for ONC. Interested candidates can submit their designs by Oct.3. Further details will be given in a webinar on Aug 1.