Mobility and Geospatial Data for Health Solutions in Africa

Allowing anyone anywhere benefit from the possibilities AI can provide. Creating real health solutions for Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa

In partnership with

Overview

The initiative is an inclusive and Pan-African hands-on training and learning hackathon focused on solving specific local problems and driving data-driven decision-making in health service optimization applications using mobility and geospatial data. The event is aimed at building an ecosystem for local talent development and the application of Artificial Intelligence in health in 4 African countries: Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa.

This initiative will expose participants such as medical doctors, health workers, pharmacists, nurses, health extension workers, AI professionals, and government workers to sessions where they will learn how to work with geospatial data and perform geospatial analysis. This will enable them to build solutions that solve unique problems on the continent. The hackathon requires great minds to develop location-oriented solutions and use cases that proffer ways to support health interventions and outcomes.

Objectives

The objective is to localize, strengthen, and support the use of privacy-preserving, open-source mobility and geospatial data to proactively build solutions that address health problems in our communities. Examples of some of the solutions that this hackathon is proposed to address are:

  • Designing medical emergency response for school children.
  • Speedy response of ambulance to emergency sites with traffic considerations.
  • Improved access to healthcare services for women and girls living in poverty.
  • Estimating correlation between demographics and healthcare centres with a view to understanding health needs.
  • Prediction of next optimum location for siting health facility.
  • Socio-economic distribution to understand access to medical care.
  • How movement of people (mobility) can be used to influence decision and health interventions in local communities.
  • Optimization of resource allocation for health interventions

Prizes

  • 1stprizes, each in Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa: $1,000 
  • 2ndprizes, each in Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa: $750 
  • 3rdprizes, each in Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa: $500
  • Overall best solution: $1000
  • Artificial Intelligence Books for top 50 winners outside the prize winners
  • Certification of Participation

Hackathon Structure

ActivityFORMAT
Training SessionVirtual
Hackathon/Solution development Virtual
WorkshopPhysical in 4 locations
Final pitch event Hybrid: The physical event will be streamed live where winners will be announced

Hackathon Activities

Workshop
17th December, 2022
Stakeholder Session

There will be a stakeholder engagement session where medical practitioners, health extension workers, government representatives, policy makers and geospatial data scientists will discuss and understand the benefits of using mobility data to mitigate and solve health problems

Timeline of Events

9th November – 30th November 2022
Registration for learning classes
2nd December - 23rd December 2022
Hackathon application
5th January 2023
Solution submission deadline
25th January 2023
Country workshops
27th January 2023
Finale event

Hackathon Guidelines

Use of anonymized Facebook (Meta) mobility data and other geospatial data for social good to support health interventions and outcomes.

You can apply as an individual or as a team. For a team, minimum of 2 and maximum of 4. Application for the online hackathon starts on the 2nd of December 2022 and closes on the 23rd of Decemeber 2022. Register here

To participate, you must be: 

  • Resident in one of the four African countries covered by the initiative (Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa).
  • Be at least 18 years old or have written consent from a parent or legal guardian.  
  • Attend 50% of the training sessions. 
  • Each team must consist of 2 – 4 members over the age 18.
  • All work related to the Hackathon must be submitted online.
  • Teams can repurpose an idea they had before the event that will help innovate the problem statement, as long as they do not re-use code from their previous idea.
  • Adding new features to existing projects is allowed. Judges will only consider new functionality introduced or new features added during the Hackathon to determine the winners.
  • Teams can use libraries, frameworks, or open-source code in their projects.
  • Teams are not allowed to make any changes or add new features after submission.
  • All submissions MUST be in English.

Your solution package should include all the datasets (or hyperlink to the datasets) used, your choice solution output and a detailed report explaining your solution.

You can either send a detailed report of your solution or make a 90 seconds video explaining your solution.

N:B – Depending on your choice of solution deployment, do note to include login access where necessary.

  • Relevance: Does it solve any of the identified problems?
  • Understandability: Is it easily understood?
  • Value-sensitivity: Does it align with the values/ethics/morals of its users?
  • Performance: How well does it solve the problem?
  • Usability: How easy is it to use?
  • Reproducibility: How easy is it to rebuild the solution?
  • Testability: How easy is it to test the solutions or verify modifications?
  • Changeability: How easy is it to modify or improve its functionality?
  • Documentation: Is the solution well documented? 

Terms & Conditions

General conditions, terms and release of liability

Use of solution entry

By submitting a solution/prototype, you grant us an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide right and license to use, review, assess, test and otherwise analyse your Submission and all its content in connection with this project, and use your submission in any media whatsoever now known or later invented for any purpose deemed fit by the project initiators.
To the extent allowed by law, by participating in the competition, you agree to release and hold harmless, Data Scientists Network, Meta and their respective partners from and all liability or any injury, loss, or damage of any kind arising in connection with any prize won.

This project is in partnership with