Hack from Home 'virtual hackathon' aims to kickstart privacy-enhanced apps to alleviate the COVID-19 crisis

Hackathon this weekend is supported by NHSX, Samsung and a number of global universities

This weekend, a virtual hackathon is taking place that seeks to kickstart privacy-enhancing solutions to alleviate the coronavirus crisis. Sponsors include UK government digital health initiative NHSX and a number of businesses, labs and universities from around the world.

The organisers are seeking help from all types of talent to form cross-functional teams, explained Professor Irene Ng, CEO of personal data consultancy Dataswift, the main sponsor of the Hack from Home initiative.

" We want back-end devs, front-end devs, entrepreneurs, domain experts, and UI/UX designers. All of these skills are important to develop a finished product that can be quickly built and implemented to help communities in this crisis."

Sponsors and mentors are also invited to sign up on the site. At the time of writing, almost 400 people from around the globe including 76 mentors have already registered for Hack from Home, and ideas submitted include a website allowing doctors to see in real-time testing availability in local hospitals, an app to enable elderly and vulnerable people to access verified volunteers, and an effective actions platform for rapidly sharing trusted COVID-19 solutions.

Privacy and security

The goal of the hackathon is to create genuinely beneficial apps that respect the privacy and security of personal data. Medical data is some of the most sensitive information out there and Ng has concerns about some of the COVID-tracking apps that are emerging in app stores. "We need to ensure that "opportunistic app makers aren't hoovering up our data, and to avoid a scenario where the world ends up worse than it was before," she said.

Successful app ideas will be built on datastores called HATS. HATS are portable, individually-owned and controlled mini-databases complete with analytics and data exchange APIs, and are the work of the Hub of All Things academic collaboration, from which Dataswift is also a spinoff. The use of this technology will ensure that personal data remains secure since the data owner has granular access control, Ng said.

"Health data - and any other data - can stay in the HAT and still be used by the app developers. Sometimes the developers can see it but don't own it, i.e. it doesn't sit on the company's server. Sometimes they can use it but can't see it, for example, algorithms running on the HAT instead of in the company's system. It depends on the application and how users agree for their data to be used."

She continued: "These are granular contracts: the company can access just the data it needs, when they need it, as opposed to a blanket ‘give us access to all your data forever'. Data can also be processed and anonymised within the HAT so, for example, a company will see ‘has COVID or not' rather the company storing a user's entire treatment log."

Hack from Home runs from 12.01 am BST Saturday 4th to 11.59 pm Sunday 5th April.

The full list of sponsors and organisers is as follows: Dataswift, Ethical Tech Alliance, HAT-LAB, Case Western Reserve University's xLab, Cleveland Clinic's Hwang Lab, WMG - University of Warwick, University of Surrey, University of Exeter, Samsung Medical Center, Hanwha, Asan Medical Center, AITRICS, and the Yonsei University Health System.