This year, Seneca launched their yearly Hackathon and here are the 8 different challenge sets on which everyone can join and pick:
Royce and I teamed up to create Team AREN and we picked the challenge set: Patient Data Consent System.
A situation & role-based data access system that makes it easy for medical professionals to gain access to patient data but also preserves confidentiality and privacy of patients. Patients can give consent to share only what they want to share and medical staff can only gain access to what they need and what was released by the patient. In the event of an emergency, all critical data for treatment must be released to medical staff. Relevant technology that could be used to secure the system and protect data should be considered (e.g., blockchain). Mentorship will be provided by sponsors to aid in solution creation.
Seneca: Digital Health Hackathon
First Day
I learned a very valuable lesson this day, before starting any project a good programmer should identify who are the stakeholders and what do they value the most. It is very important to begin any project with system analysis and a diagram to capture requirements and business analysis to understand what the business needs. Remember that at the end of the day, you are trying to ‘sell’ a program.
As my team failed to identify our stakeholders and their requirements, we did not impress our judges on the first meeting with our first design.
Luckily for us, we are a team of fast learners and we cope super quick. Our good judges explained to us what the application’s functionalities are and right after the meeting we have a new solid idea.
Second Meeting
We presented our solid idea and the judges liked it! They pointed out our mistakes and which area of the application can improved upon. Royce and I had so much ideas for the application so we had to brainstorm each idea before adding and implementing them into our application. I will confidently say that communication is truly the key. First, we had a good and fruitful discussion with our stakeholders laid out the foundation and the blueprint of the application. Second, a 1-on-1 brainstorming with the team formed a solid idea and implementation. Overall, we are able to design a logical and functioning application.
Final Countdown
Is it really the final countdown or should I say final 30 hours of staying awake to work on this project. Deprived of sleep, team AREN powered through the creation of this amazing application: (Click here to watch our 5 min video presentation)
After the submission of the final project, we slept for 4 hours to get up for the winner announcement.
After nail biting moment, the host was calling out for the challenge set winner for patient data consent system and they called out Team AREN! I was literally screaming my lungs out.
I was so happy because this was the very first ever Hackathon that I compete in, and we got so lucky.
Results
After screaming, I went to eat breakfast at 3pm to take the most peaceful and satisfying nap I have ever had.
I got the amazing hackathon Tshirt and this amazing badge:
I will definitely join any upcoming hackathon! I am just so excited to work with other people, learn and experience how to understand my stakeholders (I strongly believe that this is a important for software developers because we will be maintaining, modifying, or creating different applications throughout our work life.), learn about new technologies, and how to have fun as a Software Developer.
