German Government Organises Covid19 Hackathon

Both members of the public alongside government officials were encouraged to submit corona-related issues until today.

People from all backgrounds (sciences, project management, programming, or anyone really who wants to help) are encouraged to participate either as 'doers', 'experts' or 'mentors'. While this specific hackerthon might not necessarily yield immediate results, I think this is a great idea to get things started!

The idea is great and I think it should be generalized for the health sector. But instead of mundane data collection from patients and arcane data analytics with questionable informative value, information technology should focus more on supporting doctors instead.

Providing extensive libraries with indications can support doctors that never heard about relative uncommon disease. That would help with the logistical problems of doctors in more remote regions, where access to specialists is difficult. Developing image systems for diagnostic support can broaden the spectrum general practitioners can diagnose.

Reading your biometrics with widget xy can be helpful, but I have the impression that the border between healthcare and lifestyle choices gets a bit blurry. Especially since we have devices to measure the trivial stuff for decades.

But enough with the rant, it will be interesting with what they come up with.