The Healthy Behaviour Data Challenge
Challenge Description
Identify and create novel data sets, data sources, and analytical methodologies to improve monitoring of indicators of physical activity, sleep, or sedentary behaviour to enhance existing public health surveillance.
Who Should Participate?
- Students
- Researchers
- Public sector institutions
- Private sector organizations
- General public
Opportunity
- Phase 1: Nine awards of $10,000
- Phase 2: Three awards of $25,000
What’s Happening Now?
Congratulations to the three winners: Stremler Lab at University of Toronto, UbiLab at the University of Waterloo, Social Health Lab at the University of British Columbia.
Please note this Challenge is now closed.
The Challenge
In partnership with the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), MaRS Discovery District launched the Healthy Behaviour Data Challenge where participating innovators are asked to identify and leverage new data sources to improve monitoring of indicators of physical activity, sleep, or sedentary behaviour. The focus of the challenge is to enhance existing public health surveillance by using non-traditional data sources.
After evaluating entries from across the country, nine Canadian proposals are selected to advance to the second stage of the contest where teams continue to development and validate their concepts. The three proposals are then selected as overall challenge winners to receive a financial award of $25,000 to integrate their solution into the public health surveillance systems.
What are the data gaps?
Public health organizations typically rely on information obtained via self-reported surveys, in-person or telephone interviews, online questionnaires or direct measurement. The usability and benefits of information obtained via these methods can be impacted by declining participation/response rates, recall bias, delays between data collection and reporting as well as rising data collection costs. Given these limitations, we now have an opportunity to create new data sources and tap into existing non-traditional ones to enhance our understanding of public health surveillance.
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This challenge is aimed at identifying data sets, data sources and methodologies that will provide a deeper understanding of how to improve monitoring indicators of physical activity, sleep, or sedentary behaviour to enhance existing public health surveillance.
Phase 1 — data
Innovators will provide data and/or methodologies to unlock critical insights and quantify any number of indicators for physical activity, sleep, and sedentary behaviour within the Canadian population
New technologies and data sources, including wearable devices, geomatic data, mobile applications as well as data from social media and other online sources, provide an opportunity for national public health organizations to access and integrate a more diverse array of data into public health surveillance. Integration of data from non-traditional or novel sources can:
- Supplement existing data and overcome any limitations encountered through use of self-reported data collected through current methods
- Increase the granularity, diversity and range of data used as part of the analysis process
- Decrease the delay between data collection and analysis through continuous sampling and near-real-time reporting
- Enhance the ability to explore and address new areas of public health
Submissions will be evaluated by an external panel of expert judges. Up to nine $10,000 awards will be given to each challenge finalist for use in the continued development of their submission during Phase 2.
Phase 2 — additional features
Finalists will augment their Phase 1 submission by continuing to development and validate their concepts. Submissions will be evaluated by an external panel of expert judges. $25,000 award will be available to each of the three challenge winner. The winner will also have the opportunity to scale and integrate their concept into existing public health surveillance systems.
Post-challenge phase
The Challenge winner and Phase 1 finalists will have an opportunity to engage in activities related to adoption and integration of these solutions into the public health surveillance systems at the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Timeline
Challenge launch (27/04/2017)
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Phase 1 submission deadline (04/08/2017)
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Phase 2 kickoff (09/10/2017)
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Phase 2 submission deadline (15/01/2018)
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Winners announcement (27/04/2018)
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FAQ
You may only enter the challenge if at the time of entry you meet all of the below requirements:
- you are a legal resident of Canada
- you are at least 18 years old or the age of majority in the province or territory where you reside
- you are not an employee of MaRS Discovery District or the Public Health Agency of Canada, and you are not the immediate family member of any such employee.
The innovator will retain all intellectual property rights.
No. All submissions are kept private and no details are shared with other competitors.
If you have a question that is not answered in the FAQ, you can contact the challenge sponsor by e-mailing challenges@marsdd.com.
Challenge Sponsors
This project has been made possible through funding from:
