CDC kicks off Flu App Challenge
ATLANTA — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday announced its CDC Flu App Challenge to identify innovative and creative uses of technology that would help raise awareness of influenza and/or educate consumers on ways to prevent and treat the flu. All told, the challenge will award up to $42,500 in prizes.
The submission period runs through May 27; winners will be announced June 8.
In an effort to support a place where the public and government can solve problems together, the CDC has compiled a wealth of data that now is available to the software development community at FluApp.challenge.gov to generate innovative solutions to promote healthy flu prevention behavior. Participants will be charged with creating new ways to utilize technologies for any platform broadly accessible to the open Internet.
The judges of the competition include Jim Cashel, chairman of Forum One Communications; Maureen Marshall, health communications specialist at the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; Fred Smith, the technology team lead at the CDC's electronic media branch; Mark Smolinski, director of global health threats at the Skoll Global Threats Fund; and Peter Speyer, director of data development for the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Judging criteria (followed by weight of criteria in parentheses) includes the degree to which the app or game uses a combination of creative and relevant data sets, including at least one from the list of CDC datasets (20%); the degree to which the app operates in a functional and elegant fashion (20%); the to which degree the software applies best practices for health and risk communication, as cited on CDC.gov/HealthCommunication/HealthBasics (20%); and, most importantly, the degree to which the app is considered creative, interesting and fun to use (40%).
The awards are $15,000 for first place, $10,000 for second place, $5,000 for third place, $2,500 for “People’s Choice” and $2,500 for honorable mention. Judges will have the discretion of awarding up to an additional five "honorable mention" prizes at $500 each.