ConsenSys Health announced on April 7 the launch of the “STOP COVID-19 Virtual Hackathon,” which will take place from April 13 to May 11, 2020.

The initiative is sponsored by Gitcoin, Hyperledger, ConsenSys, One Million Developers and OpenMined. It aims to leverage blockchain and other technologies to facilitate data access for researchers and healthcare professionals seeking to curb the outbreak coronavirus and prevent future pandemics.

The virtual hackathon also hopes to advance cohesion between life sciences and next-generation experts to develop solutions that strengthen public health without sacrificing user privacy. In the words of Brian Behlendorf, executive director at Hyperledger, “This Hackathon brings together the medical and scientific communities and elite developers.”

Major evaluation criteria

Heather Leigh Flannery, founder and CEO of ConsenSys Health, highlighted some of the goals of the project, which will combine the forces of engineers from 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.”

Regarding the evaluation criteria, the solutions must meet the following: resolve, resilience, return, reimagination, and reform.

Some of the areas to be worked on within the hackathon include clinical trials for treatments and vaccines, global screening data, vulnerable population identification, privacy-preserving location tracking, and supply chain optimization for ventilators.

Blockchain-related initiatives to fight against coronavirus

The application of blockchain technology in the fight against COVID-19 has been gaining popularity in recent weeks.

Cointelegraph reported on April 6 that the Canada-based company Emerge launched a public safety system app called Civitas to assist local authorities in many nations, but focused in the Latin America region.