Well, Alex Fair from @FairCareMD and the rest of the great team at Health 2.0 NYC has done it again! Sold out event, star speaker and a mission - a mission to change our healthcare system. Please see below from Alex and re-tweet, blog, shout, poke and enthuse the health data geeks around you to participate!  

“Announcing the first ever Health 2.0 NYC UXathon/ Hackathon

Health 2.0 NYC is not about passively listening, we DO stuff.  So let’s meet Todd Park (CTO of HHS) halfway and live the dream he has been proselytizing so well.  Let’s liberate all that crunchy data he has Opened Up from Government Data Sources and make some killer apps for health living!

This contest is for the Designers, Programmers or Companies that can use the Healthdata.gov datasets out there.  Everyone else, please ignore or pass on to your friendly neighborhood designer or programmer with a little time on their hands.  Potential sponsors who want to tap into the creativity of the developers and designers of New York, please read on too…

The Challenge.

Do this:

1.  Go to the www.healthdata.gov site

2.  Imagine a useful application you could build with the many data sets there or ask a potential sponsor to help dream one up - see below if you need an idea.

3.   Mash it up and build a prototype and/or design a killer User Experience (UX) by the 10th at Noon (EST) and post it to the forumfor general review and comment. We will send a survey to gather votes. The members of Health 2.0 will serve as judges for the big prize. 

(Note, you could win with just an amazing design, but it is better if you team up with a programmer to make a prototype too.)

The Big Prize

The top 2 entries get to be displayed as part of the Health 2.0 Meet Todd Park Event. 

Sponsorship winners will be determined by individual sponsors.

Qualifications:

1.  No companies or teams, just individual programmers and / or designers - max team size = 2

2.  It has to be the work that was substantially done now, don’t dust off an old project and submit it.  You can build on previous work, just note what is new.

3.  It has to be beneficial to the delivery or practice of healthcare

4.  You need to be able to attend live or via webcam on 8/12 in NYC @ 3 PM and do a demo.

Sponsorship:

• If you would like to sponsor a team or a challenge please do so through the Hackathon/ UXathon Discussion topic here or email me. 
• Designers and / or Programmers can be sponsored by companies

Example: 

FairCareMD Physician Profiles make choosing a doctor easy but no great dataset exists that incorporates all the data freely available.  Demographics, Quality and Cost data for every Practicing Physician, Dentist, Hospital, Urgicare center, or Allied Health Professional in America should be readily and easily available to all patients.  FairCareMD is willing to sponsor the project but we need a great leader for it and to kickstart the development cycle.  The data are interspersed among many of the .gov data sets. Mash them up and if you knock our socks off we will sponsor further development and pay a $1,000 cash prize. 

Why do this?

1. Hackathons are great for hiring and jobs.  If you have the stuff and can strut it here you will get hired and have rock star status.

2. National Exposure - this event is big and will be livestreamed as well as published and tweeted online

3. Get Paid in Cash and maybe Equity - Sponsors like FairCareMD are looking for great new team members who can handle big data but we can’t afford to hire non-producers and most of us have been burned at least once.  Get into a great startup by showing your skills and don’t just be a programmer, earn some sweat equity in the next big thing.

4. UXathon? Well, because often the hacked up creations are often not all that usable - so usability is also part of this contest, where relevant

Please feel welcome to pass this on to others who might be interested.

To see more about Todd Park or the event, click here.

Once again, thank you for making our group and events what they are.

Best Regards,

Alex Fair”