Nominee Criteria:
Nominees must be individuals with a genuine connection to the Greater Seattle Area (broadly construed as Western Washington) involved in health innovation.  Nominees may be from care delivery, health and wellness, health IT, life sciences, payers/purchasers etc.  It is expected that the selected nominees are able to attend the award ceremony first part of December, if at all possible.  The nomination form will be the primary source of data on each candidate.

Nomination Categories and Evaluation Criteria:

Imagination- This category is to recognize individual achievement in conceiving new ways of solving problems in the health sector via new methods, ideas, products, services, or business models.  
Evaluation criteria:
-Originality of the innovations conceived (ie, new concept or incremental variation)
-Value of the innovations (market need, better than existing)
-Impact of the innovations (measurable cost savings, quality, improved experience)
-Scale of the innovations (how widely applicable?)

Perseverance- This category is to recognize individual achievement in demonstrating tenacity over time in the face of adversity and in transforming health innovation challenges into opportunities.  
Evaluation criteria:
-Persistence in pushing for progress in health and healthcare over many years
-Overcoming resistance- internally and externally
-Overcoming setbacks-  financial, team, technical, regulatory
-Learning from experience and transforming adversity into opportunity

Customer focus- This category is to recognize an individual member of an innovation team who maintains focus on the customer and builds deep, long-term relationships by better understanding, anticipating, and fulfilling stated and latent customer needs.  Evaluation criteria:
-Earned deep empathy with the complex realities of customers’ lives
-Developed authentic personal relationships with patients, clinicians, health administrators, researchers, and others who form the customer-base for the health innovation
-Habitually focused on the real needs of the customer rather than with what’s fashionable
-Demonstrated prophetic insights into latent and emerging customer needs

External collaboration-  This category is to recognize an individual who has put aside organizational boundaries and has established effective relationships with innovators in other companies.
Evaluation criteria:
-Eagerness towards working with allies across organizations
-Skilled at building consensus and managing constructive conflict
-Demonstrated ability to navigate complex organizations in order to achieve progress
-Willingness to accept personal and organizational risks accruing from collaborative efforts