Epic to Hold Startup Competition at App Orchard Conference

I know it’s Friday and we usually do a Fun Friday post, but while this might look like a joke I assure you it’s not. Epic has recently announced to their App Orchard community that they’ll be doing a startup competition. The prize is $5k and “an opportunity to share their pitch with a senior Epic executive to get feedback and advice, and bragging rights.”

The startup competition is being held at the Epic App Orchard Conference happening Oct 24-26th at Epic’s headquarters in Verona. For those not familiar with App Orchard, it’s basically Epic’s partner program. The Founder or CEO of the startup is required to be there to be part of the Startup Pitch competition.

The contest is a little confusing because all tiers of App Orchard members are eligible to participate. However, companies don’t have to have to have an app in the app store yet. This would have been even more interesting if they opened it up outside the App Orchard community as well. However, given the short time frame to submit and then be on stage at the conference, I have a feeling this was a kind of last minute idea that they’re making happen and so they wanted to keep it simple.

Who would have thought that Epic would hold a startup competition? Is Epic finally seeing that there’s a lot of value to them and more importantly to their customers to have a more open approach to working with partners? Ok. A startup competition is a small step, but it feels like a huge one for Epic given past history.

The deadline to apply for the competition is Sep 28th, so it might be tight for companies that aren’t already a member of App Orchard to become a member and take part, but I’d be interested to hear if any company tries. I’ll be interested to hear what companies choose to take part in the competition and what ideas they pitch. Epic is currently displaying 111 apps in their App Orchard gallery.

Times are a changing at Epic. What’s next for Epic? They’re going to start acquiring companies? Let’s not get too crazy.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

2 Comments

  • $5K, that is really not much of a offer for a multi-billion dollar vendor to offer create excitement and pull in some real innovative ideas. They are like a old nerd trying to date a hot young lady, they have no game.

  • Nope. Not that much. Especially if it costs $15k to sign up for Epic AppOrchard. However, still significant that Epic is doing anything for startups since $5k is more than $0.

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