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Some of the CamRARE team joined 150 participants at the Wellcome genome campus BioData Hackathon on 2-3 July

Focused on finding novel ways to use biological data to improve healthcare, teams had 2 days to design, develop and present their solutions. CamRARE played a pivotal role in setting the scene for the 2-days as trustee Dr Gemma Chandratillake took to the stage to deliver a presentation reminding participants about the utility of a diagnosis for those undiagnosed and living with rare conditions and the value of patient-centred, cross-sector working with an open approach to sharing research and data.

Cambridge Rare Disease Network - CamRARE takes part in the Wellcome Genome Campus Hackathon #BioHack 1
Dr Gemma Chandratillake, CamRARE trustee, inspires the attendees with her patient-centric talk
The 150 participants with backgrounds in statistics, bioinformatics, genomics, medicine, design, entrepreneurship and patient advocacy listened to pitches from each of the challenge partners before making their way into teams with others interested in a particular challenge.

Jo, our events and communications manager, mentored a team working on a Microsoft challenge. The challenge was to create a system for a clinical trial for phase 3 oncology patients around the person’s home. The 4 teams working on this challenge all brought a variety of skills and creativity to the task and  very much reflected on the patient at the centre of the challenge.  The winning team designed an all inclusive box which allowed video calls with healthcare professionals,  had an integral digital pill dispenser and a section to collect require samples for collection.

And the winners were…

Simon Hazelwood-Smith was one of the winning team in the drug-repurposing challenge set by Open Targets. You can read his blog post here about how their idea was inspired by Gemma’s talk.

Cambridge Rare Disease Network - CamRARE takes part in the Wellcome Genome Campus Hackathon #BioHack 2
Cambridge Rare Disease Network - CamRARE takes part in the Wellcome Genome Campus Hackathon #BioHack 3
 
Cambridge Rare Disease Network - CamRARE takes part in the Wellcome Genome Campus Hackathon #BioHack 4
Cambridge Rare Disease Network - CamRARE takes part in the Wellcome Genome Campus Hackathon #BioHack 5
Twitter image from the #BioHack challenges from the Wellcome Genome Campus website.