[okfn-labs] Gauging hack day interest: London and One Health
Zach Beauvais
z.beauvais at gmail.com
Fri Nov 23 10:19:04 UTC 2012
Hi Hannes,
Thank you so much for getting back to me!
OK, this sounds pretty familiar in some ways. I helped run a medical-based open day (sessions and seminars, rather than hacking) focused on bioinformatics mostly. I think the focus of the topic made it a bit more approachable by the biologists/medics, but it was slow going to get non developers there. We'll definitely need to be gathering interest now. I'm thinking my wife's contacts might be a good start at least, and might have some more leads.
Can you recommend any specific kinds of medical researcher that we'd absolutely need to have?
Do you think a more specific focus than "One Health" might help? If, for example, we focused on hacking epidemiology or *just* zoonotic diseases? (Though, now I shudder to think of getting the narrower data :) ). Some of these could do with apps which actually acquire data, or help to organise them, which is one of the things which might help if the data available is low. A mobile app building onto CKAN for field/population data gathering is one idea, for example. These look a little similar to the Health Insurance app you mentioned (http://healthinsurance.opendata.ch/) in that they're population-based, so might tie in with larger, public datasets (data.gov.uk sets even, if any are close enough). There is also some interest in apps which present and communicate data well.
Hacking medical devices sounds particularly interesting, but might be beyond my immediate contact sphere. I do know a company trying to build espresso machines capturing a host of variables (coffee geeks love data… I think it goes with not sleeping much). I wonder if they'd have some ideas for other data-rich hardware…? (http://zpmespresso.myshopify.com/, might be a long shot).
Also, were any of the people from the make camp based in the UK?
Please feel free to ping me if I can be of help. I've not yet been to Switzerland, and am looking for an excuse :).
Best,
-Z
--
Zach Beauvais | @zbeauvais (http://twitter.com/zbeauvais)
z.beauvais at gmail.com (mailto:z.beauvais at gmail.com)
http://zachbeauvais.com
On Friday, 23 November 2012 at 10:01, Hannes Gassert wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> Hannes here, organizer of make.opendata.ch (http://make.opendata.ch).
>
> From our experience gauging the interest in the medical community should go first. Hackers will understand how important the topic is, but medical professionals (at least over here) seem to have a data aversion, expecting all data to be either used against them or causing nothing but more work. Of course the situation in the UK might be quite a bit different.
>
> Then of course human health is just really, really complex. The fields were we had some sort of had a very, very broad appeal (like health insurance premiums => http://healthinsurance.opendata.ch, see http://make.opendata.ch/doku.php?id=event:2012-09 for the full list of projects), so keep the problems to be solved at a rather basic level and/or make sure there's an expert on site for each data set.
>
> Regarding data sources I have to admit: we had very little, and a good part of what we had was the result of us calling folks and coaxing them into exceptionally releasing some data. You seem to be way better off there. We're jealous, of course :)
>
> One thing we'll want to dive deeper into is hacking medical devices and tapping into their data streams. We got an interesting invitation from Cisco there, will have to follow up on that one.
>
> Kind regards from Geneva,
> Hannes
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 10:19 AM, Zach Beauvais <z.beauvais at gmail.com (mailto:z.beauvais at gmail.com)> wrote:
> > Hi Daniel,
> >
> > Many thanks, that looks like an excellent event. Were you there?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > -Z
> >
> >
> > --
> > Zach Beauvais | @zbeauvais (http://twitter.com/zbeauvais)
> > z.beauvais at gmail.com (mailto:z.beauvais at gmail.com)
> > http://zachbeauvais.com
> >
> >
> > On Thursday, 22 November 2012 at 21:55, Daniel Dietrich wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Zach,
> > >
> > > you might contact the people from OKF Switzerland, who just organized a hack-day / conference on health data - http://make.opendata.ch/
> > >
> > > I am sure they have some interesting lessons to share.
> > >
> > > Daniel
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On 22 Nov 2012, at 22:13, Zach Beauvais wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi Jenny,
> > > >
> > > > Thats brilliant, thank you. I was thinking a bit further into new year (need to get hold of some of the bloomsbury researchers etc). Please feel free to add me to any distro lists for that hack, and I'll see if I can help too!
> > > >
> > > > I'm hoping to find a venue in a college, maybe RVC (which has a nice museum of veterinary medicine which would make for good backspace), to try and get more interest from the researchers.
> > > >
> > > > I shared one hack idea, which is a kind of research scrapbook back in Sept [1], which is one idea as an example. And have setup a doc for the hack day planning too [2].
> > > >
> > > > [1]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rvF4cIuvx2QpO8uUoqTCKG48h2ncYnp3k4OdX9_V69w/edit
> > > > [2]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qdBQlkRXOntMhXOvkqfgKqdYCXdY2b6D2VT_-o8lwWg/edit
> > > >
> > > > Best,
> > > > -Z
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Zach Beauvais | @zbeauvais
> > > > z.beauvais at gmail.com (mailto:z.beauvais at gmail.com)
> > > > http://zachbeauvais.com
> > > >
> > > > On Thursday, 22 November 2012 at 21:01, Jenny Molloy wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Hi Zach
> > > > >
> > > > > +1 from the open science working group! I'm also a little involved in planning the NHS hack day, which has a more applied health focus but it might be worth avoiding the weekend of 26-27 Jan as the main catchment area for that is Oxford/London.
> > > > >
> > > > > The working group were planning an open science hack day towards the start of next year anyway so would be happy to join forces with you.
> > > > >
> > > > > Jenny
> > > > >
> > > > > On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 8:31 PM, Zach Beauvais <z.beauvais at gmail.com (mailto:z.beauvais at gmail.com)> wrote:
> > > > > > Hi Labs folk,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I am possibly planning a hack event in the new year in London on the subject of One Health. [1][2]
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The general gist is to bring together researchers from some of the Bloomsbury colleges [3] and developers/info architects as an introduction to the world of hackdays and to foster some relationships between devs and epidemiologists, researchers, PhD candidates and others.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > There are massively important initiatives happening in the world of health,[4] and a lot of the data around is messy or under-used, and I think a hack day would be a good forum to kick off ideas and show the interest of open-source devs. The kinds of themes include:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > * zoonotic diseases (diseases passed from animals to people)
> > > > > > * emerging diseases
> > > > > > * climate change
> > > > > > * urbanisation
> > > > > > * movement of livestalk and wildlife in changing environments
> > > > > >
> > > > > > and more...
> > > > > >
> > > > > > My wife (doing her PhD in epidemiology at RVC) brought this up when I ran hack days for a startup, and said she wished she could get that kind of applied focus on some of the problems they're working on. Why not? It sounds like a good challenge, and I'm sure there is interest out there.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > So, would you be interested in a hack day, in London possibly around Bloomsbury, to work on diverse data sources?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > [1]: http://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/
> > > > > > [2]: http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/
> > > > > > [3]: http://www.bloomsbury.ac.uk/
> > > > > > [4]: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/44327/
> > > > > >
> > > > > > --
> > > > > > Zach Beauvais | @zbeauvais
> > > > > > z.beauvais at gmail.com (mailto:z.beauvais at gmail.com)
> > > > > > http://zachbeauvais.com
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
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> > > --
> > > Daniel Dietrich
> > > Open Data evangelist; Open Knowledge Foundation
> > > Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age
> > > www.okfn.org (http://www.okfn.org) - www.opendefinition.org (http://www.opendefinition.org)
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> --
> Opendata.ch (http://Opendata.ch) - Enabling Open Government Data in Switzerland
> Hannes Gassert // Founding Board Member
> +41 78 663 11 09 // hannes.gassert at opendata.ch (mailto:hannes.gassert at opendata.ch)
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