What is a hackathon?
Hackathons are marathons for developing solutions that bring together technology, creativity, and innovation. In this type of event, companies participate as challengers and propose goals to be achieved by the participants.
Hackathons are events that tend to be attended by people from the technology sector due to the nature of the challenges they present. However, because the results require creative skills and teamwork, more and more people from other professions have successfully participated in this type of event.
In Children’s Health Hackathon you will develop solutions to strengthen public health and improve the lives of children and adolescents suffering from cancer or obesity. To address the problems presented by Desiderata, you will formulate tools that can lead to social changes that make children’s lives healthier.
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The Hackathon is a marathon to develop solutions that bring together technology, creativity, and innovation. To promote the development of innovative solutions that support the prevention, diagnosis, and quality treatment of children and adolescents, Desiderata organized the first edition of Children’s Health Hackathon in 2020. The event took place online and involved two areas of the Institute: Childhood Obesity and Pediatric Oncology. Since access to information is a challenge for both areas, two challenges related to access to accurate and quality data were proposed.
The event had 620 applicants, 40 participating teams, 39 mentors from the health and technology sectors who spoke with the teams individually, and R$30,000 in prizes for the winning teams.
How does it work?
REGISTRATION
The first step is to introduce yourself. Tell us about yourself, what you like to do and what you can do. Anything you think is cool and want to share with us is worth sharing.
TEAM BUILDING
Now it’s time to divide the participants into balanced teams. Always be nice and friendly to your teammates, OK?
DEVELOPMENT
Now it’s your turn to shine. You and your team have until October 25th, 2020 to idealize, develop and present your project to our judges.
CONSULTATION
During this time, you’ll have plenty of content, lives, consulting services, and on-call resources to help you along the way.
EVALUATION
Now it’s our turn. Our panel of judges will evaluate all the submissions and decide which one will take home the prize.
The challenges
Pediatric Oncology Challenge
Participants were challenged to develop alternatives to solve the problems related to childhood cancer information, so that everyone has access to data that helps the professionals involved to act more effectively in the detection and control of pediatric cancer in Brazil.
ONCOLOGY RESULTS:
137 PARTICIPANTS
18 TEAMS
The winning team proposed a tool to connect Population-Based Cancer Registries (PBCR) with Hospital-Based Cancer Registries (HBCR). The proposal is that physicians and patients can use the same tool, with access to patient history and guidelines.
Childhood Obesity Challenge
Obesity rates among children and adolescents have increased worldwide in recent decades, particularly in developing countries like Brazil. The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 340 million children and adolescents aged 5 to 19 years are overweight.
In Brazil, around 30% of 5 to 19 year-olds served in 2019 by the Brazilian National Health System (SUS) are overweight, which corresponds to about 5 million Brazilian children.
To tackle this problem, we need consistent data and information. Unfortunately, the National Food and Nutrition Surveillance System (SISVAN) has a rather inadequate coverage.
The challenge posed to the participants of the Children’s Health Hackathon was: how can technology help in the efficient collection and processing of information that influences childhood obesity, such as markers of food consumption, anthropometric data (weight and height), and other factors?
The Judges
