Chennai: The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) is organising a ‘Hackathon’ competition jointly with 108 Emergency Services for students. The aim of the ‘Hackathon’ is to come up with solutions that leverage the capabilities of a smart phone and integrate them with the backend infrastructure at call centres to speed up the flow of information and increase efficiency.

In an emergency, rapid intervention is critical and the emergency service personnel have the crucial responsibility of minimising theresponse time. Innovations in technology can play an integral part in achieving this goal, a release said.

Speaking about the event, Gitakrishnan Ramadurai, assistant professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT-M, said , “108 Ambulance Services play a critical role in providing emergency health care in Tamil Nadu. Time is of the essence and every minute saved can translate to more lives being saved. A key decision in emergency services is identifying the location and assigning the nearest available ambulance, and the hackathon hopes to develop innovative solutions for this. The idea is to leverage on ubiquitous smart phone technology to enable quicker, timely service to the public.”

Participants need to submit a proposal of what they are going to build, and then, in two weeks, participants should submit their work in progress. Based on the initial submission and work in progress report, 20 teams will be shortlisted to build their entire solution.

Selected teams will be invited to present their solution at the final event at IIT-M and will be judged by an expert panel from the industry and academia on December 15. The deadline for the registration is November 7. The winning solution will get Rs 1 lakh.