{"id":70791,"date":"2017-10-18T12:23:45","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T19:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=70791"},"modified":"2017-10-18T12:23:58","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T19:23:58","slug":"cssl-facilitates-international-epihack-project-to-fight-dengue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/10\/18\/cssl-facilitates-international-epihack-project-to-fight-dengue\/","title":{"rendered":"CSSL Facilitates international Epihack project to fight Dengue"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Computer Society of Sri Lanka<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>According to the Epidemiology Unit of the Ministry of Health, there were 80,732 cases of dengue fever reported between January 1<sup>st<\/sup>\u00a0and July 7<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a02017. This number includes 215 deaths as a result of the disease. And the worst hit was the Colombo District with 18,186 cases. Dengue has always been amongst the deadliest diseases we face in Sri Lanka. And epihack Sri Lanka aims to stop it.<\/p>\n<p>epihack is described as, a 5-day hackathon bringing together public health professionals, IT developers, IT designers and government officials to create an open source digital solution to health communication and surveillance of dengue fever with the hope of reducing the disease.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, this is different from the typical hackathons we see. This is a hackathon that encourages collaboration rather than competition. Thus, all the teams work together to build a sustainable solution. And it\u2019s not just IT developers that collaborate together. Epihack also invites health professionals to participate in the process.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also a global event that\u2019s been held in various countries. Some examples are Tanzania, Myanmar, Albania, Brazil, Thailand, Laos and more. And now, it\u2019s coming to Sri Lanka on the 6<sup>th<\/sup>of November 2017. epihack Sri Lanka is set to be a five-day event organized by Nanyang Technological University alongside University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) and Computer Society of Sri Lanka (CSSL).<\/p>\n<p>The goal of epihack is to not only develop prototypes but also ensure they bring about sustainable outcomes. This is why they invite both technology and health professionals along with other stakeholders. One project is Guardians of Health by Epitrack, which came about after epihack Rio 2015. This was an app used to detect public health emergencies and outbreaks. It utilized crowd-sourced reports to monitor symptoms and health conditions in different areas. Three years later, epitrack has expanded into a young startup and launched a new app called Flu Near You! to track and fight the flu.<\/p>\n<p>Another project is Afyadata from epihack Tanzania in 2014. This was built by the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance (SACIDS). It\u2019s used to collect, submit, receive and\/or track feedback of health data. A completely open source tool, once it has this health data is stored and analyzes it to help health professionals make decisions.<\/p>\n<p>The epihack Sri Lanka will be held from the 6<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0\u2013 10<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0of November 2017 at Cinnamon Lakeside. To be a part of this global hackathon and take the fight to dengue,\u00a0please fill out this form here &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/2D8y8E\">https:\/\/goo.gl\/2D8y8E<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For information about epihack\u00a0, please visit epihack.org .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Computer Society of Sri Lanka According to the Epidemiology Unit of the Ministry of Health, there were 80,732 cases of dengue fever reported between January 1st\u00a0and July 7th\u00a02017. This number includes 215 deaths as a result of the disease. And the worst hit was the Colombo District with 18,186 cases. Dengue has always been amongst [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}