Think Outside the Box: Participate in APA’s Innovation Lab

APA’s first-ever Psychiatry Innovation Lab contest will be held at APA’s 2016 Annual Meeting in Atlanta. This event will bring together teams of physicians, entrepreneurs, advocates, technology professionals, and administrators and challenge them to come up with new ways to improve the delivery of mental health care.

We are inviting all psychiatrists attending the Annual Meeting to participate. There are two ways to get involved:

Those selected as finalists and innovation leaders will be notified by May 1. They will be invited to join us on Sunday, May 15, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. in Room B211/212 in the Georgia World Congress Center.

Prizes include $2,500, sponsored by the telemedicine startup Doctor on Demand, and an audience prize presented by Tristan Gorrindo, M.D., APA’s director of education.

“This is a groundbreaking time for new ideas, new technology, and new models of care,” said APA Leadership Fellow Nina Vasan, M.D., chair of the event. “We are excited by all of the new developments occurring in mental health: new smartphone apps, mobile devices, wearables, digital health, and medical informatics, along with new models and policies encouraging prevention, collaborative care, telemedicine, and mental health parity and equality.”

Dr. Vasan, a Harvard-trained physician, is completing her residency at Stanford University School of Medicine and doing further training at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Psychiatrists and mental health leaders are already discussing a diverse range of topics that can be incorporated into the Psychiatry Innovation Lab. Opportunities abound to address issues such as cultural and diversity inequities; advocacy for psychotherapy research; prevention and public health initiatives; psychiatric education; partnerships among nonprofit, government, academic, and community agencies; and the delivery of appropriate mental health treatment for incarcerated individuals.

Attendees will get to learn from a stellar panel of judges from academia, patient advocacy groups, commercial startups, and business incubators. Judges include Grayson Norquist, M.D., chair of APA’s Council on Quality Care and chief of the psychiatry Service at Grady Health System; Philip Wang, M.D., Dr.P.H., APA’s director of research; Mary Giliberti, J.D., chief executive officer of the National Alliance on Mental Illness; Kana Enomoto, M.S., acting administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; Dena Bravata, M.D., M.S., chief medical officer of Lyra Health; Mimi Winsberg, M.D., a psychiatrist at Lyra Health; NeuroLaunch’s Jordan Amadio, M.D., M.B.A., an Emory neurosurgery resident; and Donovan Wong, M.D., medical director of behavioral health for Doctor on Demand. ■

Read more about the Innovation Lab contest here. A Psychiatric News article about the lab, “Resident Wants to Jump-Start Thinking on Quality Improvement,” is also posted at the site.