Innovation Challenge Past Winners
2025 Winners
First Place: $100,000
The International Institute of New England (IINE) was awarded first place for their “LNA for Success” program. This program will expand access to health care training and career pathways through a partnership and trust-based model, helping more immigrants improve their English, access clinical training, and earn LNA certification.
Second Place: $60,000
Offloader AI was named second place for their intention to revolutionize health care efficiency with the world’s first multilingual AI medical co-pilot, automating tedious tasks, reducing burnout, and allowing health care teams to focus more on patient care.
Third Place: $40,000
Southern New Hampshire Health (SNHH) and Major Choice were awarded third place for their initiative, “Career Quest: Charting Your Healthcare Pathway.” With this initiative they aim to support individuals re-entering the workforce or feeling stuck in dead-end jobs by helping them explore meaningful health care careers.
2024 Winners
First Place: $100,000
Androscoggin Valley Home Care Services’ “The IDEA” (Inter-Disciplinary Elite Aides) intends to build a local LNA hierarchy, trained in every community health care organization (HCO) serving one rural community. LNAs will be trained, tested and “certified” to work in each HCO, essentially completing an orientation to learn work, its routines, culture, etc. These LNAs will then be eligible to access a web-based scheduling system on which all partner HCOs will post open shifts. LNAs will be able to choose any day/time/shift/health care organization 24/7 to work when they so desire, thereby filling needs on a day-to-day basis and relieving the pressures of real time short staffing, not just short staffing due to vacant positions in the HCOs.
Second Place: $60,000
Lightcap Health of Durham was named second place for its project, “PULSe,” (Personality-Based, Understanding, and Long-term Support for Healthcare Workers), which will be an innovative video subscription as a service (SaaS) platform aimed to reduce nurse burnout. The program will do so by offering videos tailored towards people’s personalities based on a holistic approach to education and goal setting for healthy behaviors.
Third Place: $40,000
Third place went to New Hampshire Hospital in Concord for its project addressing mental health workforce development. This initiative will be to recruit and develop a workforce from underserved populations (new Americans and low-level offenders or those seeking a “second chance”) to serve the unique needs of acute psychiatric patients in the Granite State while being paid a living wage during training to meet current and future mental health workforce needs.
If you’re interested in submitting an innovative idea, you can find all details of the competition on the main Innovation Challenge page.
If you have additional questions or want to volunteer to be a part of the competition planning, please contact HealthForce NH