Today ConsenSys Health announced the Stop COVID-19 Virtual Hackathon to start April 13 and run through to May 11. Sponsors of the initiative include Gitcoin, Hyperledger, ConsenSys, One Million Developers and OpenMinded. The first virtual panels by mentors will be available today.
The project brings together three open source communities from Ethereum, Hyperledger and OpenMinded.
“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,” said Heather Leigh Flannery, Founder and CEO of ConsenSys Health. “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.”
Healthcare and life sciences volunteers will mentor developers. The group aims to address many of the issues highlighted in the news. The areas include clinical trials for vaccines, galvanizing supply chains for ventilators, location tracking without compromising privacy and other topics.
The award for first place is $10,000, with second and third place receiving $7,000 and $3,000, respectively.
The panel of judges so far includes ConsenSys founder and CEO Joseph Lubin, Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of Hyperledger and four executives from ConsenSys Health. ConsenSys Health recently spun out of ConsenSys.
A week ago a few members of Hyperledger including HACERA, IBM and Oracle agreed to collaborate to collate Coronavirus data. And to the surprise of some, U.S. Homeland Security listed blockchain as a critical service in the context of COVID-19.
