The X Prize Foundation has set its sights on healthcare reform  and has launched a $10 million Healthcare X Prize competition to spur innovation from global health innovators. The overall aim of the competition is to increase health care value by 50 percent in a 10,000 person community over a three year period. As we have heard from a number of wireless health thought leaders, remote monitoring and mobile applications could play a big role in achieving the X Prize's vision. 

The foundation has invited written ideas for the Healthcare X Prize. They plan on choosing five ideas for a three-year trial run in real U.S. communities or at employers. The winner would then be chosen based on a "community health index" that includes things like: improved ability to climb stairs, reductions in visits to emergency rooms and overall health costs.

Here's the complete run down on the competition from X Prize Foundation's Senior Health Advisor Scott Shreeves, MD:

"We are entering an unprecedented season of change for the United States health care system. Americans are united by their desire to fundamentally reform our current system into one that delivers on the promise of freedom, equity, and best outcomes for best value. In this season of reform, we will see all kinds of ideas presented from all across the political spectrum. Many of these ideas will be prescriptive, and don't harness the power of innovation to create the dramatic breakthroughs required to create a next generation health system.

We believe there is a better way.

This belief is founded in the idea that aligned incentives can be a powerful way to spur innovation and seek breakthrough ideas from the most unlikely sources. Many of the reform ideas being put forward may not include some of the best thinking, the collective experience, and the most meaningful ways to truly implement change. To address this issue, the X PRIZE Foundation, along with WellPoint Inc and WellPoint Foundation as sponsor, has introduced a $10 million prize for health care innovators to implement a new model of health. The focus of the prize is to increase health care value by 50% in a 10,000 person community over a three year period.

The Healthcare X PRIZE team has released an Initial Prize Design and is actively seeking public comment. We are hoping, and encouraging everyone at every opportunity, to engage in this effort to help design a system of care that can produce dramatic breakthroughs at both an individual vitality and community health level.

Here is your opportunity to contribute:

Download the Initial Prize Design
Share your comments regarding the prize concept, the measurement framework, and the likelihood of this prize to impact health and health care reform.
Share the Initial Prize Design document with as many of your health, innovation, design, technology, academic, business, political, and patient friends as you can to provide an opportunity for their participation

We hope this blog rally amplifies our efforts to solicit feedback from every source possible as we understand that innovation does not always have a corporate address. We hope your engagement starts a viral movement of interest driven by individual people who realize their voice can and must be included. Let's ensure that all of us - and the people we love - can have a health system that aligns health finance, care delivery, and individual incentives in a way that optimizes individual vitality and community health. Together, we can ensure the best ideas are able to come forward in a transparent competition designed to accelerate health innovation. We look forward to your participation."

For more, check out the X Prize website here.