The New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) and a New York City-based Foundation have announced a competition under which teams of coders and application developers will be graded on their ability to create online tools that help non-specialists analyze the cost, quality and efficiency of hospital procedures. The four-month competition announced by NYSDOH, and undertaken with support from the New York State Health Foundation, will evaluate web-based, mobile and desktop-based solutions that use publicly-available data from sites like the state’s Health Data NY site. That site, which was created a year ago, permits experts and non-expert users to analyze hospital discharge information in a variety of formats. The winner of the “Healthy Connections = Health Communities” competition will receive $15,000. According to the announcement, an independent panel of experts will award first, second and third-place prizes for solutions that “present quality, cost and efficiency data in a format this is easy to interpret.” Winners will be announced in September. For more information on the New York State Health Innovation Challenge, visit www.health2con.com.