A GROUP of physics students from the University of the Philippines-Diliman bagged the gold prize in the #thinkOPENhealth: Hackathon for Health held recently at the Asian Institute of Management in Makati City.
Twenty-one teams composed of information-technology professionals and students, physicians and nurses competed in the 24-hour hackathon, organized by Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) wireless unit—Smart Communications (Smart)—the Department of Health (DOH) and the Department of Science and Technology—Philippine Council for Research and Development (DOST-PCHRD), in coordination with SmartDevNet, Smart’s developer community.
The hackathon encourages developers to create plug-ins for the Shine OS+, an open-sourced electronic medical record (EMR) system developed by the Ateneo Java Wireless Competency Center in partnership with Smart.
Used mainly by local government-operated health-care facilities as an EMR, Shine OS+ has now opened its API to provide access to other systems enabling data sharing and interoperability that can improve the provision of healthcare services by local government and national health agencies, adhering to the goal on universal health-care program.
“At Smart, we have optimized mobile- and Web-based technologies to create solutions to real-world problems. In the case of Shine OS+, we want to help make health-care services accessible to more Filipinos,” said Ramon R. Isberto, Smart’s public affairs head.
“The hackathon helps our department think out of the box. If we want to have better outcomes, we should not be doing things again and again and expect different outcomes. We intend to adopt the innovative solutions that have been brought up by these young people,” Health Underscretary Kenneth Hartigan Go said.
Paul Pajo, senior developer evangelist of Smart, said: “Shine has a lot of features and they have interoperability with other systems. The developers are now tasked to see how to exploit these interoperabilities by creating a plug-in.”
UP Diliman’s Team Quantum Hackers won the gold award for their mobile wireless sensor-based water quality-testing device and app called Shine Herald. It tests the salinity (saltiness) and turbidity (cloudiness) of water samples to help prevent and monitor water-borne diseases. Team members Norman Mascarinas, a graduate student, and undergrads Kit Guial and Junelle Bacong, won P100,000.