The New York City Economic Development Corp. is promising to monetize the end result for innovators in health and technology in the Big Apple.

Digital health innovators are being encouraged to enter a new contest called Innovate Health Tech NYC, which kicked off on Monday.

Innovate Health Tech NYC invites software and hardware developers and other innovators living or working in New York City to create commercially viable technologies that solve urgent health care problems. Individuals, teams, and companies with 10 or fewer employees can compete, and will be required to demonstrate a functioning prototype of a pre-commercial technology in their submission.

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Contests to help spur innovation in the mHealth application market is nothing new — we’ve seen countless apps emerge from such events around the world as the mobile healthcare industry continues to gain incredible momentum.

The latest event to produce such innovation took place just before the Health 2.0 Europe Conference in Berlin, in which Aetna sponsored a code-a-thon with EUR 10K worth of prizes.  Aetna invited the best developers, designers, health experts and health tech entrepreneurs to compete on the challenge of developing “innovative mobile apps to promote health and wellness across the globe.”

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Walgreens is continuing its aggressive mHealth push by launching yet another pilot program to allow customers to schedule appointment to its clinics directly from their smartphones.

The pilot program was launched at clinics in Denver and Chicago as a start, and to use the new scheduling service patients must first download the free iTriage app for iPhones and Android devices.  The partnership with iTriage is key, as it signifies how important this app has become in the mHealth space.  In its first three years since launch, for example, iTriage has seen more than 6 million downloads.

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I came across an interesting infographic that does a great job detailing the massive growth we’re seeing in the mHealth space, as well as the overall sentiment towards mobile health technologies on behalf of American consumers and physicians alike.

According to the graphic there were more than 1 billion visits to physicians’ offices in the U.S during 2011.  According to the survey driving the data for the infographic, it was found that 40% of doctors believe mobile health technologies can reduce the number of office visits.  In addition, 80% of doctors are already using smartpthones and medical apps, of which there are more than 10,000 available in Apple’s iTunes App Store.

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It was announced today that Kony Solutions, makers of a multi-channel application development platform called KonyOne, has launched an updated version of its mHealth application targeted at healthcare payers.

The updated mobile app is targeted at payers looking to offer members end-to-end mobile solutions, in addition to putting secure health plan information at the patient’s fingertips, on any mobile device they want to use.  Kony’s multi-channel platform supports 99% of mobile devices in use today, including Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows, J2ME devices, HTML5, native or hybrid applications as well as older mobile web browsers.

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Happtique, a company known for creating a mobile app store specifically for mobile health applications, has announced plans to form a blue-ribbon panel to oversee development of a new mobile healthcare app certification program.

The new certification program will help evaluate and certify new mHealth apps for both professionals and patients.  The certification program will specify quality and performance standards that focus on an app’s “clinical appropriateness and technical functionality.”

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It’s been announced by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) that Axial Exchange has won it’s $25K “Health 2.0″ challenge with its innovative Care Transition Suite designed to ensure a “safe transition from hospital to home.”

The contest sponsored by the DHHS called on developers to devise an intuitive application that dealt with the issues and complications often associated with moving a patient into and out of a hospital safely and efficiently.  The challenge brought about 40+ submissions total.

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