Improving Technology Innovation in Medicaid Programs

Although health technology innovations – such as telehealth, remote monitoring, digital health, web-based platforms, and applications – hold the promise of improving patient outcomes and cost savings, few of these benefits have been realized by Medicaid programs. While the private sector has been aggressive in developing and implementing health technologies, Medicaid programs have lagged in their technology investments.

This effort will convene a workshop entitled “Workshop to Inform Technology Innovation and Research for Medicaid Programs” to identify challenges faced by Medicaid beneficiaries and programs that are amenable to a technology solution, brainstorm prototype solutions, and disseminate the findings. AcademyHealth and Social Innovation Ventures will prepare and conduct the workshop and, subsequently, disseminate outputs. Attendees to the workshop will include Medicaid medical directors and clinician thought leaders with an interest in exploring technology solutions for challenges facing Medicaid consumers and stakeholders.

The specific aims of the research are as follows:

• Identify promising innovation and research strategies to enable health-technology advancement in the Medicaid population.
• Design solutions to top problems identified during pre-surveys and reactions to survey results.
• Establish a research and innovation agenda to be disseminated to the broader health-technology innovation community through peer-reviewed publications.

Pre-workshop surveys will be disseminated to collect information on challenges faced by Medicaid beneficiaries that may be solved with technology solutions. In the first part of the workshop, participants will be guided through brainstorming sessions to identify areas to pursue. In the second portion, attendees will have the opportunity to iteratively ideate prototype solutions. Post-workshop activities will focus on disseminating workshop findings targeted toward policy, research, and innovation leaders so they are able to prioritize their activities to improve Medicaid beneficiaries' lives via technology. This workshop will provide a unique and timely opportunity to gather clinician thought leaders and Medicaid program designers to accelerate the application of evidence-based care and expand research agendas to include evaluation of existing technologies.