• Sign up for an Airtable account at https://airtable.com/if you don’t already have one.
• We will send out instructions and/or invitations on how to access the Hackathon base in Airtable to view and edit information there.
• Click on the link to access the information.
• In the Participants table, review and update your information as necessary, including your preferred/available roles.
• Open the Projects table and review the projects there. in the Projects table. See if any interest you and think of how to use/revise it to develop a project. Or you can enter a new project idea. See attached guidelines for development of projects.
• Look for people you may want to team up with in the Projects and Teams tables. You can join an existing team or form one of your own. Teams should have about 2-4 people and have people from different backgrounds and fields.
• You can also look in the Participants Grouped by Title table to help you find potential team member.

If you are from outside UAB and we have not yet been in contact with us about XIAS so you can access Cheaha/High-Performance Computing (HPC) at UAB, please email me and Jelai Wang (jelaiw@uab.edu) right away to set up an account.

Obtain a Cheaha account if you plan to do data wrangling or software development and have not done so already. See instructions on requesting one. It is not necessary for all team members to have an account. Users from outside UAB will need to be sponsored for outside access (see #2).

Obtain a GitLab account (https://gitlab.rc.uab.edu). Go to the LDAP tab, use your BlazerID login and password. See #2 if you are from outside UAB. Use the GitLab for code sharing.

Use Box for sharing files and documents (not necessarily code to be shared with the wider community. Box is especially useful for transferring or sharing files that are too large send via email. You can store files for your team here (login UAB BlazerID. We will send you a link to view and edit documents for your team.

Note that if you plan to participate as a expert, panelist, or mentor in a field of expertise but not involving technical aspects such as software development, coding, data wrangling (I am not a technical person), then it may be optional for you to complete all the technical preparations. However, you may learn something, improve your ability to understand and collaborate on technical aspects, and perhaps even move toward becoming technically savvy yourself.

Detailed patient data for UAB patients will be available to participants from UAB for whom that data sharing is permitted. Unfortunately, participants from institutions outside UAB will not be able to access this data.

The datasets will not include overt identifiers (name, medical record number, etc) but may include zip codes and dates related to clinical values. This form of dataset is considered to be a HIPAA Limited Dateset and requires some restrictions on access and use. As such, per IRB and institutional policy, release of of datasets requires HIPAA training, IRB Human Subjects Protection training and an Acknowledgement of Restrictions on the Use of Limited Datasets.

Prior to the Hackathon any participant from UAB seeking access to Clinical datasets from UAB Medicine must complete the following (if you have not previously done so or if your training is out of date). If you are from outside UAB, we will work with you to gain access to necessary resources (see #3).  If IRB Human Subject Protection training and HIPAA Training have not been completed those are required as well, but those are typically in place as a matter of normal practice for those involved in research. See below for instructions on how to access and receive training for these resources:

• See the CCTS i2b2 web page, has more information about i2b2 and how to Complete HIPAA training in the UAB Learning Management System. The link can be found here.
• Complete IRB Human Subjects Protection training. You can complete this through the UAB Learning Management System or CITI. See information and options for IRB initial training or IRB continuing training. If you are new to UAB, you can use training from your previous institution or other approved organizations. We recommend taking the CITI course, which has modules that are common to many research institutions.
• Complete the “Acknowledgement of Restrictions on the Use of Limited Data Sets” in the UAB Learning Management System. This link will take you to the course in the campus-side training system. Email the certificate to i2b2support@uabmc.edu.

We’d like to get everyone thinking about and preparing their projects for the upcoming hackathon. See attached guidelines document which describes characteristics of good projects. See the Projects table in the Hackathon Airtable base for projects and project ideas. The table includes detailed information about the project and individual(s) who submitted the project. Researchers have also indicated the suitable of the project and assessments of readiness of the project. Feel free to take any of these and revise as you wish (e.g., narrow the scope, focus on one aspect or use case).

If you have your own project in mind, you can enter it directly in the Projects table on the Covid-Hackathon Airtable base, or you can submit it through our project submission form or to me via email. Please include detailed information about the project, such as what your research question is and how you would answer the question. Also include any relevant publications and datasets (from UAB and/or publicly available).

Please sign up for teams in the Teams table in Airtable. Teams will ideally have about 2-4 members and have a mix of backgrounds and areas of expertise. You may wish to pair up with people you know, people with common interests, and/or people with complementary backgrounds.

Each team will work on one project, but multiple teams may work separately on the same project – they may use different approaches.

Sign up for your project and team and/or invite others to join your team (preferred). If you do not organize or join a team, we, will do our best to match people with projects and teams.