Panchapakesan Chitra, Sheldenkar Anita, Wimalaratne Prasad, Wijayamuni Ruwan, Lwin May Oo
Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
School of Computing, University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
JMIR Form Res. 2019 Aug 29;3(3):e11555. doi: 10.2196/11555.
Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease that has increasingly affected Sri Lanka in recent years. To address this issue, dengue surveillance through increasingly prevalent digital surveillance applications has been suggested for use by health authorities and the general public. Epihack Sri Lanka was a 5-day hackathon event organized to develop a digital dengue surveillance tool.
The goal of the research was to examine the effectiveness of a collaborative hackathon that brought together information technology (IT) and health experts from around the globe to develop a solution to the dengue pandemic in Sri Lanka.
Ethnographic observation and qualitative informal interviews were conducted with 58 attendees from 11 countries over the 5-day Epihack to identify the main factors that influence a collaborative hackathon. Interviews were transcribed and coded based on grounded theory.
Three major themes were identified during the Epihack Sri Lanka event: engagement, communication, and current disease environment. Unlike other hackathons, Epihack had no winners or prizes and was collaborative rather than competitive, which worked well in formulating a variety of ideas and bringing together volunteers with a sense of civic duty to improve public health. Having health and IT experts work together concurrently was received positively and considered highly beneficial to the development of the product. Participants were overall very satisfied with the event, although they thought it could have been longer. Communication issues and cultural differences were observed but continued to decrease as the event progressed. This was found to be extremely important to the efficiency of the event, which highlighted the benefit of team-bonding exercises. Bringing expert knowledge and examples of systems from around the world benefited the creation of new ideas. However, developing a system that can adapt and cater to the local disease environment is important in successfully developing the concepts.
Epihack Sri Lanka was successful in bringing together health and IT experts to develop a digital solution for dengue surveillance. The collaborative format achieved a variety of fruitful ideas and may lead to more hackathons working in this way in the future. Good communication, participant engagement, and stakeholder interest with adaptation of ideas to complement the current environment are vital to achieve the goals of the event.
登革热是一种由蚊子传播的病毒性疾病，近年来在斯里兰卡的影响日益增大。为解决这一问题，有人建议卫生当局和公众利用日益普及的数字监测应用程序进行登革热监测。“斯里兰卡健康黑客马拉松”是一项为期5天的黑客马拉松活动，旨在开发一种数字登革热监测工具。
本研究的目的是检验一场协作式黑客马拉松的成效，该活动汇聚了来自全球的信息技术（IT）和健康专家，旨在为斯里兰卡的登革热疫情开发解决方案。
在为期5天的“健康黑客马拉松”活动期间，对来自11个国家的58名参与者进行了人种志观察和定性非正式访谈，以确定影响协作式黑客马拉松的主要因素。访谈内容根据扎根理论进行转录和编码。
在“斯里兰卡健康黑客马拉松”活动期间确定了三个主要主题：参与度、沟通和当前疾病环境。与其他黑客马拉松不同，“健康黑客马拉松”没有优胜者或奖项，是协作性而非竞争性的，这在形成各种想法以及召集有公民责任感的志愿者以改善公共卫生方面效果良好。让健康专家和IT专家同时合作受到了积极评价，并被认为对产品开发非常有益。参与者总体上对该活动非常满意，尽管他们认为活动时间可以更长。观察到了沟通问题和文化差异，但随着活动的推进这些问题不断减少。这被发现对活动效率极为重要，突出了团队建设活动的益处。引入世界各地的专家知识和系统实例有利于产生新想法。然而，开发一个能够适应并迎合当地疾病环境的系统对于成功开发这些概念很重要。
“斯里兰卡健康黑客马拉松”成功地汇聚了健康专家和IT专家，以开发用于登革热监测的数字解决方案。这种协作形式产生了各种富有成果的想法，未来可能会有更多黑客马拉松以这种方式开展。良好的沟通、参与者的参与度以及利益相关者的兴趣，同时使想法适应以补充当前环境，对于实现活动目标至关重要。
