innovation

Enhancement Foundation for Community Driven Innovation, Highway Park Neighborhood Preservation (HPIP) and Palm River Family Services, were selected from a group of 8 regional innovators across West Florida to receive $5,000 in funding. They will also advance to GuideWell’s Growing Resilient Communities challenge finals in October for the opportunity to compete for a $40,000 state grand prize. Funds will be used to accelerate the development of their place-based approaches that focus on addressing economic inequities that exist in their respective local communities.

The three organizations from West Florida advancing to the state finals include:

GuideWell Mutual Holding Corporation (GuideWell), the parent to a family of forward-thinking companies selected three North Florida organizations, to receive seed money to implement their innovative ideas to address economic disparities.

The organizations - Jacksonville’s LIFE, Keystone Heights’ Mission of the Dirt Road and Tallahassee’s Domi Station - were selected from a group of 12 regional innovators across North Florida to each receive $5,000 in funding. In addition, they advance to GuideWell’s Growing Resilient Communities challenge finals on Oct. 27 where they’ll have the opportunity to compete for a $40,000 state grand prize. Funds will be used to accelerate the development of their place-based approaches that focus on addressing economic inequities that exist in their respective local communities.

Program overviews of the three North Florida organizations advancing to the state finals:

GuideWell Mutual Holding Corporation (GuideWell), the parent to a family of forward-thinking companies, including Florida Blue, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan of Florida, and the Lake Nona-based GuideWell Innovation Center, today selected three Central Florida organizations to receive seed money to implement their innovative ideas to address economic disparities.

Everyone should have an equal opportunity to thrive in life no matter what zip code they reside in. But for people who live in places where economic and heatlh disparities are high, their chances of achieving optimal health and well-being diminish. That's why GuideWell is launching the Growing Resilient Communities statewide well-being challenge. The goal is to accelerate the development of place-based approaches focused on addressing economic disparities in underserved communities in Florida.

GuideWell helped launch the contest that asked global innovators to develop effective, radically affordable COVID-19 testing amid the pandemic

XPRIZE, the world’s leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, is pleased to announce today the five winning teams in the $6M XPRIZE Rapid Covid Testing competition, with each winner creating high-quality, affordable COVID-19 testing to help society safely reopen and return to everyday activities.

GuideWell Mutual Holding Corporation (GuideWell), the parent to a family of forward-thinking companies focused on transforming health care was a founding partner of this challenge. GuideWell, in collaboration with XPRIZE, OpenCovidScreen, as well as other innovative organizations announced the competition in July to encourage the world’s most innovative individuals and organizations to develop new testing methods.

From hosting live pitch events for entrepreneurs from across the country to bringing together top health care industry officials to discuss the future of health care, the GuideWell Innovation Center, located in Orlando’s Lake Nona Medical Center, has grown from a building and a concept into a nationally-recognized hub for health care innovation. Today marks an exciting milestone for GuideWell Innovation Center as it celebrates the five-year anniversary since opening its doors.

GuideWell Mutual Holding Corporation (GuideWell), the parent to a family of forward-thinking companies focused on transforming health care first opened its doors in 2016. The 30,000 square-foot center provides state-of-the-art co-working and meeting space and has become an epicenter of innovation and collaboration. In the last five years, the team has hosted 1,500 events and welcomed 25,000 visitors, including health care industry leaders, government officials, and a host of guest speakers.

Fourteen Florida organizations dedicated to improving health equity will face off in the GuideWell Reshaping Health Access Challenge virtual state finals on Wed., Oct. 28 for an opportunity to win a grand prize of $40,000 in funding to further their efforts to help achieve health access or health literacy in their respective community. The 14 finalists were selected after pitching their solutions to a panel of judges at one of four regional pitch events held virtually in mid-September.

GuideWell issued the statewide challenge to entrepreneurs, nonprofits, innovators and organizations to seek innovative ideas for improving health disparities – an issue that has long existed and that has become more pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent civic unrest and racial tension across the country.

GuideWell Mutual Holding Corporation (GuideWell), the parent to a family of forward-thinking companies focused on transforming health care, announced 13 health-tech companies from across the nation will showcase solutions that address some of the major challenges of the current health pandemic today at the GuideWell COVID-19 Health Innovation Collaborative Showcase. A virtual substance abuse support system and an AI-powered COVID-19 symptom attestation platform are among the concepts and prototypes that will be featured.

All of the ideas focus on increasing the scope and scale of resources to reduce the complex stress factors COVID-19 is having on our country’s health care system.

COVID-19 has the potential to change many things for the health care industry and for the way we operate.

We've long been advocating that everyone deserves access to high quality affordable care. COVID-19 doesn't change that, but it is accelerating our creative thinking so that in the midst of crisis we can continue moving our mission of helping people and communities achieve better health forward.

This pandemic has required us to reimagine how we do business and how we can best serve our members and communities.

We've been required to adapt, be nimble, and further lean in to our corporate value of imagination.

Stay-at-home orders forced us to temporarily close our Florida Blue centers.

GuideWell has announced it is launching a COVID-19 Health Innovation Collaborative, an initiative that seeks to connect diverse innovative health-technology companies across the U.S. to bring forth solutions that address gaps in response to global health pandemics.

“At GuideWell, we believe it takes a village to support people and communities to achieve better health,” said Ana Gupte, GuideWell chief strategy and innovation officer. “We are launching this initiative as a call for solution-driven thought leaders to join a collaborative and innovative task force to aid our nation through this global health crisis and to better prepare us for future health pandemics.”