ConsenSys Health has launched a virtual hackathon on Ethereum called STOP COVID-19.
It is an invitation to experts in healthcare, life sciences and blockchain, as well as Web 3.0 technologists, to join an online hackathon that will start on Monday, April 13th and will last until May 11th, 2020.
The aim is to involve these experts in the design of solutions that prioritize public health without sacrificing privacy and security, accelerating research to combat the current Coronavirus pandemic.
Starting as early as April 6th, participants can start joining Q&A-based virtual panels, with tutors from life science organizations providing a better understanding of the field.
Healthcare and life sciences experts will act as tutors for developers throughout the hackathon to help them understand key issues in this area.
The solutions developed during STOP COVID-19 will be evaluated according to the model proposed by McKinsey & Company, consisting of:
- Resolve,
- Resilience,
- Return,
- Reimagination,
- Reform.
Judges include Joseph Lubin of ConsenSys, Brian Behlendorf of Hyperledger, Alex Cahana, Sean Manion, Jonathan Holt and Debbie Bucci of ConsenSys Health.
The hackathon, in addition to ConsenSys, is co-sponsored by Gitcoin, Hyperledger, One Million Developers and OpenMined, and seeks to harness the blockchain and other emerging technologies to improve access to data, as well as its truthfulness, for researchers, health experts and life science professionals working to stop the COVID-19 pandemic and prevent future epidemics.
The total prize money is $20,000, divided as follows: $10,000 for the first runner-up, $7,000 for the second and $3,000 for the third.
Winners will then be guided to seek additional sources of funding through Gitcoin and ConsenSys grants, and other funding opportunities within ConsenSys Health.
The hackathon will be hosted on Gitcoin, a platform on which developers can collaborate and monetize their expertise by working on open source projects through gifts, grants and hackathons.
ConsenSys Health founder and CEO, Heather Leigh Flannery, said:
“In the face of the COVID-19 crisis, our goal for this global competition is to bring together healthcare and life sciences domain experts with engineers from three open source software communities: Ethereum, Hyperledger, and OpenMined. Working together for the first time with a very specific toolset, this interdisciplinary group will rapidly create highly-relevant solutions with the potential to have both immediate- and long-term positive impact. The core of our effort is to leverage converging innovations like blockchain, tokenization, zero-knowledge cryptography, and federated machine learning to advance immediate and long-term public health goals while preserving individual privacy”.
Hyperledger executive director Brian Behlendorf added:
“To take on the challenges brought forth by COVID-19, it’s vital to marshall experts from across disciplines and markets. This Hackathon brings together the medical and scientific communities and elite developers with the singular goal of developing operational solutions, built on cutting-edge software, to mitigate damage and speed recovery from this pandemic. Hyperledger fully embraces this opportunity to help accelerate innovation on this front and will engage its community and technologies in this incredibly important work”.
