Federal Innovation Through Prize Competitions - National Institutes of Health

Event highlights and key takeaways from 2024 webinar

Challenge.gov’s series, Federal Innovation Through Prize Competitions, explores how government agencies leverage prize competitions to engage the public, drive innovation, solve national problems, and advance critical technologies. The second webinar of our series featured the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and how the agency created the resources, guidance, and policy to implement game-changing prize competitions and challenges. Access the event recording here.

Taylor Gilliland – NIH Challenge Manager and Senior Advisor to the NIH Deputy Director for Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives – grounded the conversation in NIH’s mission to sustain advancements in the sciences and public health that ultimately lengthen life, enhance health, and reduce illness and disability. NIH is among the top three federal agencies on Challenge.gov in the number of prize competitions they run each year. Since 2011, NIH has run 130 prize competitions, with total prizes offered nearing $85 million.

Challenges range across categories such as Analytics, Design, Ideas, Software, Scientific and Technology. Two examples of the diverse range of problems the NIH solves through prize competitions are the Long COVID Computational Challenge and the Rare Diseases are Not Rare! 2020 Challenge. The Long COVID Computational Challenge was an Analytics challenge run in 2022 with the goal of identifying who might be suffering from long term Covid using predictive AI with a total cash prize of $500,000. Rare Diseases are Not Rare! 2020 Challenge was a Design challenge sponsored by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. This challenge was centered around finding innovative ways to communicate about rare diseases through social media or art with a total awards of $5,000.

NIH considers prize competitions as part of a toolbox of innovation strategies along with contracts, grants, cooperative agreements and Other Transaction Awards. Each tool in the toolbox serves a specific purpose and solves a particular problem. Compared to other mechanisms, prize competitions offer a lower barrier to entry allowing for increased diversity in participation and unanticipated solutions to challenges. Historically, prize competitions have also stimulated private sector investment in critical need areas. NIH has used prize competitions and challenges to set ambitious goals to be solved in a relatively short time-frame without high levels of risk by only paying for results.

Much of the success of NIH challenges is due to three Ps: Policy, Procedures and Practitioners. Policy allows NIH to operate prize competitions under the federal America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010. In addition, NIH internally operates under the NIH Challenge and Prize Competition Policy. Procedures include NIH staff resources such as a step-by-step guide on how to navigate the lifecycle of a competition and related approval processes. And finally, Practitioners refers to the community of experienced challenge managers across NIH. This includes a dedicated agency-wide Challenge Manager who provides oversight on challenge policy and supports NIH Institutes and Centers to use prize competitions as an open innovation mechanism.

With the right combination of policy, procedures and practitioners, NIH is able to use prize competitions to accelerate healthcare innovations, increase the number and diversity of solvers addressing a problem, draw attention to critical public health topics, stimulate private sector investments, and more.

Did you miss our previous Federal Innovation Through Prize Competitions conversation with the U.S. Department of Energy’s American Made Program? Check out our summary post or watch the full recording.

Learn more about these events at Challenge.gov/events.