UP Mediasina, a team of six UP medical students, is in the top three of the 2021 Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) Global Health Case Competition for its Project Dinig, alongside teams from Nanyang Technological University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The real-world challenge presented to students was to make a proposal for “technology-driven solutions to the COVID-19 infodemic”. According to the organizers, “This challenge focuses on addressing the massive amount of misinformation that has quickly spread throughout the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, with dramatic negative personal and societal consequences.”
In a letter to UP, APRU Global Health Program Director Mellissa Withers says 121 teams from 37 universities participated in the challenge, which has a US$1,000 prize.
Through a 10-minute video, Team Mediasina proposed the creation of a task force in the Health Promotion Bureau of the Department of Health to counter misinformation. Its tasks include: “digital and community monitoring” of misinformation and infodemic response; and, either “debunking” or “pre-bunking” false information, depending on a data stratification, with the help of an inter-sectoral network. It aims to formulate a “health information-handling algorithm”, the team added.
The top three videos were chosen by an international panel of 30 judges. The wining team will be announced on November 18. Final scores will include the judges’ scores combined with the votes from the participants of the APRU Global Health Conference 2021.
Team Mediasina is composed of Kariza Pamela Abu, Anna Michaella de la Cruz, Joseph Rem de la Cruz, Robyn Gayle Dychiao, Stefanie Anne Francisco, and Leonard Thomas Lim.
