The X Factor

For those that might have missed it, a very interesting industry challenge was announced this week.  The X Prize Foundation – a philanthropic organization known for sponsoring competitions such as the Google Lunar X Prize – announced a collaboration with Wellpoint to “develop a $10 million or more competition designed to generate new ways to address the nation’s serious health care system challenges.”  Beyond generating a lot of publicity around their projects, prior competitions have actually served to fuel real innovations, so it will be interesting to see the impact for healthcare.

Anyone familiar with the challenges facing the healthcare ecosystem today can see that this competition is a bit different.  As the excellent WSJ veteran David Hamilton points out over at BNET, many of the things that need fixing are broader reaching and more systemic than what a typical X Prize challenge addresses.  His latest blog post lists five reasons this competition won’t work.  In the spirit of Friday optimism (and because I like symmetry), I thought I might offer 5 reasons why I think it might work.

Continue reading “The X Factor”

For those that might have missed it, a very interesting industry challenge was announced this week.  The X Prize Foundation – a philanthropic organization known for sponsoring competitions such as the Google Lunar X Prize – announced a collaboration with Wellpoint to “develop a $10 million or more competition designed to generate new ways to address the nation’s serious health care system challenges.”  Beyond generating a lot of publicity around their projects, prior competitions have actually served to fuel real innovations, so it will be interesting to see the impact for healthcare.

Anyone familiar with the challenges facing the healthcare ecosystem today can see that this competition is a bit different.  As the excellent WSJ veteran David Hamilton points out over at BNET, many of the things that need fixing are broader reaching and more systemic than what a typical X Prize challenge addresses.  His latest blog post lists five reasons this competition won’t work.  In the spirit of Friday optimism (and because I like symmetry), I thought I might offer 5 reasons why I think it might work.

Continue reading “The X Factor”

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