One of the tasks of the POLVAS team was to organize and conduct a Hackathon which had 2 aims: 1) to analyse other methods of designing a user interface that can support federated queries (user interface track) and 2) to analyse other system solutions to return aggregated, anonymous, FAIR data (greenfield track).
On 21 Jan 2023 we had the opportunity to host 19 IT experts in the field of user interface/user experience and data engineers at the Conference Center of the Faculty of Medicine of the Jagiellonian University, Krakow. Thanks to the input of the FAIRVASC clinicians and technical team participating in the Hackathon, designers had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the current interface, to review problems with its use and to share thoughts on possible new functionalities. The time to create the new solutions was limited to 9 hours and prizes were awarded for the best
solutions. The participants worked tirelessly throughout the day and our FAIRVASC mentors were available on site to provide knowledge about rare disease research and the functioning of the FAIRVASC project. The result of the meeting was: 7 interface solution projects, a sketch of an algorithm for estimating data anonymity and a project using Python to ask queries of the FAIRVASC database. We are very impressed by the creativity of the participants at the event and thel FAIRVASC consortium would like to congratulate both the winning teams (Designer Acrobats, Kuba and Vlad, Teresa and Krystyna and Agata) as well as the other participants. The FAIRVASC team intend to review the results in more detail and their applicability to FAIRVASC in the future.