BLOCKTEST ANNOUNCES CLOSE OF “HEALTHCHAINHACK”

This article was originally published on

BlockTEST.com

on December 14th, 2018.

Startup’s Inaugural Competition Promotes Blockchain Adoption through Co-Innovation

After 60 days of friendly virtual competition, BlockTEST announced the close of HealthChainHack , their inaugural competition which saw a crossover between the healthcare industry and blockchain technologies. Judges deliberated over the competition’s submissions, some of which were developed across borders in this online global challenge. The competition saw 240 total participants from 28 countries across the world. BlockTEST, a startup founded at MIT campus that aims to nurture budding blockchain technologies to mass adoption, created and hosted the two-month-long competition. Participants were challenged to use their blockchain distributed app-building knowledge to reimagine and revitalize traditional healthcare processes.

HealthChainHack saw assembled a panel of passionate judges and advisors between the healthcare and blockchain industries, led by Yuan Hua Ding, Senior Director and Head of External R&D and Innovation at Pfizer; Joonho Lee, General Partner at Kryptoconomy and ex-chief information officer of Fed Reserve System at New York; Shada Alsalamah, Visiting Scholar at MIT MediaLab and assistant professor at King Saudi College; and Dana Attar, an Advisory Board Member at Queen’s College. During a week of deliberation, judges considered several factors in all HealthChainHack submissions, such as the technical score generated by BlockTEST, project business models and potential social impact. In the end, the two winners were chosen as follows: Team Caravan , winner of $100,000 worth of Google Cloud Credits; and AI4AI , winner of a six-month incubation at Z-Park Innovation Center in Cambridge, MA.

Team Caravan saw their members joined from across the globe, with members in the UK, Ukraine, and Russia. Their mission statement is to “build applications and practices that enable a decentralized world,” — the team ultimately hopes to provide consulting, blockchain integration, R&D, and ICO lead-up services. With the highest overall score, Team Caravan created the most technically advanced submission across HealthChainHack .

AI4AI , whose members are based in San Francisco, CA, hopes to “improve the lives of people living with autoimmune conditions” by “provid[ing] predictive analytics that help patients manage autoimmune symptoms and contribute to the discovery of new treatments based on patient data.” With the second highest score, the AI4AI submission cut a very close second in technical performance across the competition. The judges announced the team BeMyBlock , whose members are based in Thailand and Singapore, as the winner of HealthChainHack’s category prize for Most Creative submission. Finally, the judges chose four teams as Honorable Mentions — Aspiring Apps , BEMR , Trusted Trials , and TechChain . As winners look forward to celebrating, and as HealthChainHack hosts wrap up months of dedicated planning, the new year approaches with the promise of opportunities in the distributed world. BlockTEST co-founder Jennifer Jiang said of the competition’s wrap-up: “The last few months have been so exciting for us, hosting the industry’s first-of-its-kind major event as a new startup. Our whole team is grateful to our supporters and sponsors — without them this event would not have been possible. We hope that everyone is excited to see more from BlockTEST in the future.” BlockTEST already has its next steps laid out: the startup just recently announced the beta release of Greenhouse , their performance-testing tool for blockchain solutions.