Fighting the Flu One App at a Time
A little R&R and lemon tea have long been popular cures for the flu. However, those antidotes may just become less in demand as the CDC seeks a new way to educate the public on flu outbreaks and prevention through novel technological approaches.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the consulting firm Forum One Communications are running a contest to help improve public education about the flu. Individuals or teams entering the contest have a shot at $35,000 in prizes.
The strategy of the Flu App Challenge is two-pronged: The contest is aimed at endorsing the agency’s comprehensive flu data sets, while acting as a teaching tool to raise awareness about influenza prevention. Those who’ve caught the bug to develop something innovative, informative and educational can submit their creations to the Challenge.gov site. The entries can include everything from mobile applications for iPhones, iPads or Android; applications for Facebook; applications for electronic health records; applications for Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault; Web widgets and more.
“We thought this was a great chance to try to use this vehicle to not only promote the CDC’s data and content to developers but to see how to use this challenge mechanism to capitalize on the great ideas that are out there,” Fred Smith, technology team lead for the CDC’s Electronic Media branch, told eWEEK.
Contest stipulations include using one or more data sets on the Challenge.gov site, where developers can find supporting resources, such as influenza vaccination estimates, RSS feeds, JavaScript Object Notation Feeds, and an XML source of the Weekly Flu Activity Report. The application must be free to the public and accessible up to one year following the final results.
The challenge “allows the CDC’s Web content to be accessed as an API that can then be leveraged into Web applications or mobile applications so that developers would have access to credible health content they can leverage inside of their applications,” Smith said.
And prize amounts are nothing to sneeze at: $15,000 for first place; $10,000 for second place; $5,000 for third place; $2,500 for People’s Choice; and up to $2,500 for Honorable Mention.
Contest submission, available to solo developers and teams, lasts until May 27. (Individuals can submit more than one application.) Judging is scheduled for May 28 through June 7. Winners will be announced at midnight EDT on June 8.
source : Smarter Technology
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