On the 15.-16. of March 2013 the Fukushima chapter of Health 2.0 held a uniquely themed Hackathon: Medical + Security.

The Hackathon aimed to inspire the entrepreneurial community in Fukushima and beyond to build successful solutions for the digital healthcare industry. In particular, we hope this event will help to grow interest in the emerging field of Medical + Security in Fukushima and across Japan.

The Fukushima Hackathon was the first ever combination of Medical + Security. We had 59 visitors; including some of the most influential hackers and entrepreneurs in the security field, along with medical and computer science students from University of Aizu and Tokyo.

The event itself was held at the beautiful Alts Bandai ski resort in Fukushima and encompassed not only some serious hacking, but also guest speakers, programming seminars, as well as more extra-curricular events such as snow boarding and extreme ironing.

Final presentations were made aboard a boat on the nearby lake Inawashiro.

We were fortunate to have excellent speakers at the event, such as Noriko Yoshikawa, the Associate Director of the Foundation for Biomedical Research and Innovation (FBRI). She spoke on the subject of going beyond the medical needs (医療ニーズのその先へ). Ken Okuyama of Sony Digital Network Applications who spoke on the secure development life cycle for medical software (医療ソフトウェアのためのセキュア開発ライフサイクル) and finally, Professor Maki Sugimoto, M.D. who spoke eloquently on how to improve the presentations of scientists (科学者を動かすプレゼンテーション思考). He is an Associate Professor of Gastroenterology, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine and a Visiting Professor of visiting lecturer of the Department of Bioengineering at the School of Engineering, University of Tokyo.

Our discerning jury was divided in two. A jury for the Medical Hackathon and a separate jury for the Security Hackathon.

The Medical Hackthon jury:

Maki Sugimoto (M.D., Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Gastroenterology, School of Medicine, Kobe University)
Ryuichi Iritani (Healthcare Equipment Industry Project Manager at the Fukushima Prefecture’s Commerce and Labor Department, Industry Creation Division)
Hiroyoshi Horinaga (Representative of toyaku.com)

The Security Hackathon jury:

Muneaki Nishimura (Sony Digital Network Applications, Inc.)
Marat Vyshegorodtsev (Rakuten, Inc.)
Sen Ueno (Tricorder. Co. Ltd.)

We are proud to announce that the winning teams of the 2013 Fukushima Medical + Security Hackathon were:

For Medical: Shingo Otsuka, Yu-ki Kojima, Kazuki Murakami, Yuya Kaneda (The “Otsuka Corporation”)

The “Otsuka Corporation” proposed a system for implementing the recognition of patient’s eye movements. With sensors tracking these movements it is possible to communicate with patients who cannot themselves move or speak (e.g. locked-in syndrome).

For Security: Chida Masaaki.

Chida Masaaki is a widely renown security expert and key member of the Japanese Capture the Flag (CTF) team which won the World Security Competition in 2012.

Altogether 9 significant vulnerabilities were found in less than one day across the following medical software:

• OsiriX Imaging Software
• ORCA, Japan Medical Association Standard Receipt Software
• ConQuest DICOM Software

Naturally, we received explicit permission by the software developers in advance and we will be sending feedback detailing the vulnerabilities, bug reports and countermeasures.

As a whole, we consider the Fukushima Hackathon a great success and were glad to see both the Nikkei writing about our event, TV crews interviewing our participants and for the event to be generally well received by the media outlets.

A special thanks to Alts Bandai for supporting the Hackathon with a spectacular venue: http://www.alts.co.jp. The ISSM for their collaboration in promoting and developing this event along side their academic conference they day before. And most generously the METI, Tōhoku (http://www.meti.go.jp/english/index.html) who made this event possible through their generous funding. Finally, the Fukushima Hackathon would not have been possible without the unerring dedication of our staff here at Eyes, JAPAN.