Press release

31 Mar 2020 Diegem, BE

Dozens of solutions to fight COVID-19 during HACK THE CRISIS

During the hackathon, various teams competed to come up with innovative solutions against COVID-19. In the end, no fewer than 36 teams and 614 people from 7 different time zones took part in the online event.

Press contact
Christophe Ballegeer
Christophe Ballegeer

EY Belgium Brand, Marketing and Communications Director

PR & Communications EY Belgium, travel - wining & dining - football - tennis - father of 2 lovely kids.

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Related topics COVID-19 Innovation
  • The online hackathon HACK THE CRISIS took place last weekend.
  • The 10 best pitches were presented during a live stream on Sunday evening, 29th of  March. With a prize pool of € 25,000, the winning teams will be able to further develop their solutions to tackle the corona crisis.
  • EY’s The Factory team was involved in the practical organization of this event and provided EY mentors. The EY CogniStreamer team provided their platform as the main ideation tool for the hackathon.

During the hackathon, various teams competed to come up with innovative solutions against COVID-19. In the end, no fewer than 36 teams and 614 people from 7 different time zones took part in the online event. More than 80 mentors assisted the teams with their expertise. Participants set out to find solutions to the biggest challenges in healthcare, education, business continuity, logistics and wellbeing.

More than 600 participants registered for the hackathon HACK THE CRISIS Belgium, of which approximately 250 people lasted all the way to the end. The participants formed 36 teams, each given a total of 48 hours to work out a concrete solution for a specific challenge. All this was done remotely, via online communication platforms. During the hackathon, the teams were assisted by different mentors with expertise in various disciplines. They answered questions, shared contacts from their network and guided the teams where necessary.

Who Won?

The 10 best pitches were presented during a live stream on Sunday evening, 29th of  March. Minister-President of the Flemish Government Jan Jambon opened the virtual pitching event with a keynote. With a prize pool of € 25,000, the winning teams will be able to further develop their solutions.

The jury, including EY WEM Innovation Leader Wouter Desmet, picked out these 3 winning solutions:

  • Nr 1: Corona Home Test
  • Nr 2: WeCare
  • Nr 3: AnalysisMode

The Corona Home Test was the big winner of the Hack The Crisis event. It’s an online platform where people can order a test kit. The kit allows people to test themselves for the corona virus at home, share the results and consult the anonymously collected data with parameters such as symptoms, age groups, etc. The Corona Home Test team will receive a support-package from EY, worth  € 15,000. The prize includes a potential co-creation track, individual mentoring from EY partner Wouter Desmet, and innovation support from The Factory team.

Watch the 10 best pitches here.