Reflections

[elixiraddons]

It is great to see such challenges and the sponsorship to encourage public participation for a noble cause.

Congrats to those who persevered and made it. Good luck to the five finalists!

That said, I should admit that, in my opinion, this was a poorly managed event.

Here are some areas for improvement going forward.

1. Please make sure the deliverables are explained clearly. The fact that an apps challenge doesn't need a working app blows my mind! Am sure I am not alone here.

2. Judging based on a video and presentation doesn't sound right for an Apps Challenge!

This is unfair to those who built a working app, but failed to create an appealing video or presentation?

Technically, a marketing/multi-media firm with no technical capability can do this and become a finalist.

What if they cannot deliver a working application eventually? Will you go back and re-evaluate the applications from the rejects who didn't make to the five finalists?

3. Please make sure that the APIs are working and have data from the beginning.

I can show many examples from challengepost.com to illustrate why this is important and the impact this can have on the quality of the apps.

Archimedes API fared better here with a working API even though I would like to see this bit earlier for the convenience of developers.

Surescripts API was a total confusion and there are numerous discussion threads on this forum to support this.

4. The fact that the flat file was not available till few days AFTER the deadline made it very hard for testing.

5.The discussion forum was not getting clear answers for the questions - one reason I didn't bother to follow after my initial questions got similar response.

6.After going in circles, and adding a second PDF upload for business plan couple of days before the deadline made those submitted folks confused?

Planning looks impossible with such last minute change in direction causing utter confusion?

 

7.The finalist announcement got just postponed! One more proof that things seem to be not going as planned?

Lot of lessons to learn for future. Otherwise, the goal will be defeated.

[Janet Prumachuk]

For those of us who were impacted by Sandy, an extra two days was just not enough time.  Now the finalist notification is pushed out by 11 days.  Good luck to the finalists.

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[Jean-Luc Neptune, MD MBA - Health 2.0]

Elixiraddons -

Thanks for the feedback.

JL

---------------------------------------
Jean-Luc Neptune, MD MBA
Senior Vice President, Health 2.0
j...@health2con.com
www.jeanlucneptune.com
646-734-2320

Learn more about the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge:
www.health2challenge.org

On Nov 15, 2012, at 8:44 PM, elixiraddons wrote:

[Dave Vockell]

Murali, 

Those were great comments, and programs like this greatly benefit from participants like you that take the time to share their well-articulated thoughts.

I think this challenge has done a great job trying to reach a certain outcome as best they can with the circumstances of the moment. I’ll try to not to be sycophantic as I take a pass at how I think this unfolded.

1. My guess is that it was easy to look at Feb 14 and know that was a great day to launch a heart health program.  The Archimedes and SureScripts APIs weren’t ready to go, but I bet they made a decision that it was better to gut-it-out with the APIs in their best state possible vs. missing out on Feb 14.  It is definitely annoying to product owners to have incomplete data, but as far as the competition goes, we were all on a level playing field.

2. This event is called an APP CHALLENGE, but I suspect it should be more accurately called a PROGRAM CHALLENGE. Different than the recent AETNA  Reminder challenge where the winner was then connected to the tech, dev and sophisticated promotion teams at Aetna (including the Triage team), the winner of this Challenge has to be stand-alone-successful as a technology and program (and in many ways, marketing) provider. There are limited (if any) successful mobile programs run by municipalities, so a lot of the insight and juice is going to have to come from the winner.  The video is a great screening tool for surfacing what more the winning team ‘has in the tank’ besides app dev. From the submissions I’ve seen scattered across YouTube, Vimeo and Slideshare, most of the submissions are in a pretty narrow band of innovation (some surprisingly so), so the video might be a good way to separate some generally equivalent submissions.  The rules do include a specific DING for features called out in the video and not present in the app.  I suspect that if an app in the Top 5 doesn’t really work, the #6 participant probably didn’t have a good shot at winning.

3. Whether the APIs worked or not, they had good enough documentation.  Either your logic worked on them or it didn’t.  It was developmentally unsatisfying (and annoying) to see mocked up data in the APIs or occasionally have them break, but it was also a good test of the Challengers – it’s a reality that we will have to work with partners with uneven data quality.

4. I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other on whether this forum provided clear answers, but I found the moderators very responsive.  I can’t tell what time zone Jean-Luc is in, because he seems to answer these posts around the clock.  

5. The last minute business plan change I thought was a good “we probably should have done this from the beginning” decision although an unpleasant extra piece of work right at the deadline.  On the other hand, they are looking for a partner who is ‘in it to win it’ and it was probably a good screening decision.  But yes, annoying and distracting in the home stretch.

6. I hate and I love the constant pushing back of the deadline for submissions and in-store apps.  What I hate is that I keep hustling my team against a date, and then have to recalibrate the hustle.  There are only so many times I can cry wolf.  What I love is that with each push another thing moves off our team’s “can’t get it done in time” list onto the “dev and ship it” list.  But what I love the most about the date slide is that it is probably letting a lot more of the ‘hobbyist’ teams make a credible showing.  For example, I bet this is part of the Marshfield Clinic dudes job to get this submission finished, their app is lovely and clearly they have a nice marketing team that did their video.  However, Janet (on this thread) has a full time job outside of this competition, but her team might have that great insight that this easy deadline format will let her bring to fruition. 

What’s the punch line to this long-winded response – this whole thing could have gone smoother, but I think the Challenge Overlords made a lot of decisions that will a) surface the right partner for their MH rollout, and b) really supported an important group in cracking the health tech opportunity…the hobbyist team.

Dave

[elixiraddons]

Dave,

Thanks for the feedback. As always, a coin has two sides, this is not an exception.

That said, most of your points do not make sense for a program in it's second year.

Also, based on my experience with various challenges on challengepost.com, this is very lacking and can be improved significantly by addressing the issues (and recommendations) I provided.
Most of the noise on the forum could have avoided if the information was accurate and clear from the get go - I am saying this from the other challenges I have seen do very well.

I hope if there is a third year run, we don't repeat this.
It will be tragic if public perception doesn't match the background efforts and as you know, perception matters for challenges too, not just for apps.

I will be more than happy to provide any help in addressing these if anyone is interested.

Murali.