Nichols Martin
A Hitachi subsidiary has partnered with the American Heart Association and blockchain company BurstIQ to administer a COVID-19 data challenge.
The challenge seeks data on the relating factors between COVID-19, other health conditions and social aspects such as income, race, geography and gender, Hitachi Vantara said Tuesday.
The effort aims to provide researchers with an additional pool of data resources and uncover the relationships between COVID-19 and external factors.
Participants will gain access to the American Heart Association’s Precision Medicine Platform that features datasets on cardiovascular studies and cloud spaces for analytics, computing and scientific collaboration.
BurstIQ will contribute its COVID-19 datasets to the platform. Hitachi Vantara, the platform’s developer, will allot over $100K for the challenge’s prize pool.
The contest will consist of an initial stage and a second stage where finalists will compete for a grand prize of $15K. Health and data experts will conduct a peer review to determine the winner.
“Our collaboration with the American Heart Association and Hitachi Vantara on this data challenge allows the research community to truly accelerate the pace of COVID-19 research,†said Frank Ricotta, CEO at BurstIQ.
