The second edition of the EmergencyEye Hackathon

Entrepreneurial enthusiasm to save lives combined with a VLN1 race

On 24-25 March 2018, more than 80 international hackers from India, Spain, Belgium, Poland, England, Germany, and even Costa Rica and Houston,Texas, spent more than 24 hours in a marathon at the Nürburgring, some without sleep, working on programming solutions for people with acute cardiac arrest. The event was organised by EmergencyEye® and the RAMSES project with the support of EIT Health. Christine Neumann, Communication and Public Affairs Manager of EIT Health Germany, represented EIT Health and supported the Hackathon over the weekend.

A video about the event

The second edition of the “Hackathon Am Ring” continued to use the motto “Save lives with your hack.” Here hack denotes: Programming new codes and connecting software solutions.

Three teams not only developed new codes over the weekend in the 24-hours #hackathonamring marathon but also developed the projects up to the prototype phase and submitted them to a jury.

The three winners have developed solutions for the following challenges:

• Remote Access Development
• Platform Development
• Tools in action to save lives.

A highlight of the event was the VLN1 race that took place right before the #hackathonamring on 24 March at the Nürburgring. It was an innovative format, which was enjoyed by all participants. Some of the VLN1 race winners also joined the #hackathonamring for a short interview after the race. On the second day, the participants also had the opportunity to join a Race Taxi Drive on the race track.

Tobias Wittich, Founder and CEO of The Place in Berlin gave a keynote speech during the first day about entrepreneurship and starting a business.

Furthermore, a group of eight international emergency dispatchers joined the Hackathon on both days, to give insights into their daily work and to support the teams with practical guidance. Frank Boerger, an experienced Emergency Medical Dispatcher, and his team showed real-life examples and explained the importance of first-aid support and assistance. The first seconds during an emergency situation are crucial and this assistance can save lives. They also simulated a life-saving scenario and afterwards some participants could further test their life-saving skills while giving a cardiac massage to a first-aid doll.

It was very valuable that the eight international dispatchers joined the #hackathonamring to share their experiences and to give feedback to the hackers who developed new solutions and integrated these useful insights. The dispatchers are the customers, and the voice of the customer has been taken very seriously during the EmergencyEye Hackathon and has influenced the developed solutions.

The project EmergencyEye® was developed by the start-up company Corevas GmbH & CO.KG and is implemented in an international consortium consisting of 11 partners with the aim of reliably guaranteeing remote access to smartphone-based information and functions in health crises and emergency situations.

While the RAMSES (Remote Access to Medical Information on Smartphones during emergencies and Health Crisis) project is developing and standardizing the interface and platform for the smartphones, the project directly prototypes the potentially life-saving product EmergencyEye® up to the proof of concept.

The partners of Corevas GmbH & CO.KG in the project RAMSES are the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Rheinisch Westfälische Technical University Aachen (RWTH Aachen University), the University of Cologne and the University Hospital Cologne, the Catholic University of Leuven and the Interuniversity Microelectronics Center in Leuven (imec), BIO Clustermanagement NRW GmbH, ISE mbH, Liki Mobile Solution and the Nofer Institute in Lodz. GetSpeed Performance GmbH & CO.KG was involved as a strategic partner in the conceptual design and implementation of #hackathonamring.

A video from the first Hackathon