The MyHeartMap Challenge is a community improvement initiative and part of a

research Research is "creativity, creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular att ...

study being conducted at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

to map

automated external defibrillator An automated external defibrillator (AED) is a portable electronic device that automatically diagnoses the life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias of ventricular fibrillation (VF) and pulseless ventricular tachycardia, and is able to treat them thro ...

s (AEDs) in the city of

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Challenge description

The challenge takes the form of a contest wherein the person or team to find and report the locations of the maximum number of AED devices in the city gets a grand prize of USD 10,000, provided at least 750 AEDs are reported in total or 500 AEDs are reported by a single team. 20 to 200 "Golden" AEDs have also been identified in advance, photos of which will gain the submitter a USD 50 prize. The challenge runs from January 31 through March 13 of the year 2012. The challenge has drawn interested from various quarters, including academic institutions who are participating with the aim to build up and study a more intelligent crowdsourcing campaign.

Crowdsourcing

The MyHeartMap Challenge is an example of

crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...

, an approach to accomplishing tasks by opening them to the public. The organizers of the challenge were inspired by the

DARPA Network Challenge The 2009 DARPA Network Challenge was a prize competition for exploring the roles the Internet and social networking play in the real-time communications, wide-area collaborations, and practical actions required to solve broad-scope, time-critical pr ...

, in which teams completed to locate 10 red weather balloons placed at random locations all over the United States. According to the MyHeartMap Challenge Director Dr. Raina Merchant, "DARPA succeeded with locating red balloons. AEDs are a natural extension of a brilliant idea."

Teams

Given the scale of the challenge, the most likely winner is going to be a team rather than an individual. A global effort to assemble a large team is underway, organized by computer scientists from MIT,

UCSD The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

Masdar Institute The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology was a graduate level, research-oriented university focused on alternative energies, sustainability, and environmental research. In 2017, it merged with two other institutions in Abu Dhabi, Petroleum ...

, and

University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

. The team, dubbed HeartCrowd, includes some of the winners of the DARPA Network Challenge, which inspired the MyHeartMap Challenge.

Outcome

The challenge officially ended on Tuesday, March 27, 2012, and the individuals were announced several weeks after. According to the organizers, over 1,500 AEDs were submitted from 300 teams and individuals.

References

{{Reflist

External links

MyHeartMap Challenge Official Website

HeartCrowd Team Official Website
University of Pennsylvania