Patient Safety Technology Challenge

The Patient Safety Technology Challenge was created to fuel the engagement of students and innovators in creating solutions and envisioning transformational approaches to reduce preventable harm from medical errors. The initiative injected patient safety awards into existing local, regional, and national competitions to support budding tech-enabled patient safety solutions and inspired the documentary, The Pitch: Patient Safety's Next Generation, which celebrates innovators (including two identified through the Patient Safety Challenge) and increases awareness of the patient safety crisis.

Guided by national partners experienced in safety technology and advanced healthcare analytics, the Challenge funds awards to organizers of existing events, from hackathons to start-up weekends.

Since kicking off in 2022, the Challenge has now inspired over 1,200 patient safety teams to work on solutions at 87 different events – from hackathons, pitch competitions and business plan competitions – across the U.S., Canada, and England. A total of $205,350 in prizes was given to innovators, and 100 different patient safety and healthcare experts were involved in judging and supporting competitions.

Grand Awards

The Patient Safety Technology Challenge Grand Awards brought together the creativity from dozens of competitions and hundreds of innovators from across the world. Participants of past Patient Safety Technology Challenge sponsored competitions from September 2022 through May 2024 were invited to compete for a prize pool of $25,000 cash. Six finalists were flown to Las Vegas and pitched live on the Startup Stage at CES 2025. Read more about the winners here.