Operation Ward Zero

Operation Ward Zero is an online healthcare technology hackathon organised by Wooble Software Private Limited on behalf of Nursio Innovation Pvt Ltd. It asks a single, focused question: what if a patient's bedroom could function like a smart hospital ward? Hospitals have continuous monitoring, trained staff, and alert mechanisms to catch changes in a patient's condition. At home, patients often rely on family members and caregivers who have no continuous monitoring or early-warning systems. The hackathon invites innovators, developers, and problem-solvers to close that gap with software.

Who Should Apply Open to students, recent graduates, aspiring developers, and technology enthusiasts interested in healthcare innovation. Participants from engineering, computer science, information technology, data science, artificial intelligence, and related disciplines are encouraged. Inter-college and inter-specialisation teams are explicitly allowed — participants from different institutions or academic branches may collaborate. Each participant may belong to only one team, and each team must nominate one leader responsible for registration, coordination, and final submission.

Problem Statement & Themes Teams design and develop a software-based healthcare monitoring solution demonstrating the workflow: Patient Data → Monitoring Platform → Risk Assessment → Alert Generation → Caregiver Response. Participants may address one or more challenges: patient monitoring (simulating vitals such as heart rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, and temperature); caregiver monitoring (tracking attendance, activity, and alert response); system reliability (handling connectivity interruptions, delayed data, or service failures); contextual intelligence (combining vitals, history, and caregiver notes for risk assessment); predictive analytics (AI/ML to flag possible deterioration 24–48 hours ahead); and alert and escalation (categorising risks and notifying the right caregiver).

Technical Tracks Three tracks are offered: IoT Development (simulated sensors, data collection and transmission, device communication workflows); Full Stack Development (monitoring dashboards, data visualisation, caregiver alert and acknowledgment systems, backend services, databases, APIs); and AI/ML Engineering (patient risk classification, anomaly detection, context analysis, explainable risk predictions). Teams are encouraged to show end-to-end integration but are not expected to be experts in every domain. No physical hardware is required — simulated sensors, synthetic patient data, mock devices, and software environments are permitted.

Format & Timeline Single-round project submission and evaluation. Round 1 is prototype development and submission, with a submission deadline of 24 October 2026 via the official Wooble challenge page. Round 2 is evaluation and results, announced 31 October 2026. There is no separate live presentation or physical evaluation round. Mandatory deliverables: a working prototype; a GitHub or GitLab source code repository with README, setup instructions, dependencies, and sample or synthetic datasets; technical documentation covering problem understanding, architecture, tech stack, features, data processing and risk approach, and assumptions and limitations; and a roughly 3-minute demonstration video showing the full workflow from sensor simulation through AI risk detection, alert, and caregiver response.

Judging Criteria Submissions are scored on End-to-End Integration (25%), Technical Skills (20%), Reliability & Resilience (20%), Practical Implementation (20%), and Explainability & Clinical Safety (15%).

Prizes Total cash prize pool of ₹10,000: 1st position ₹5,000, 2nd position ₹3,000, 3rd position ₹2,000. Additional opportunities include 3 internship positions with potential Pre-Placement Offers (subject to selection and organisational requirements), verifiable participation certificates for eligible participants who successfully submit, and exposure to industry reviewers and the organising company. A PPO is not guaranteed and depends on internship performance and selection criteria.

Eligibility Teams of 2–3 members. Inter-college and interdisciplinary collaboration permitted. Each team may submit only one final solution. Submissions must represent the team's own meaningful technical contribution; open-source libraries, frameworks, pretrained models, and APIs may be used with acknowledgment and licence compliance. AI-assisted development tools are permitted provided the team understands and can explain the implementation. Real patient information must not be used without authorisation — synthetic or anonymised data is strongly recommended. Solutions are experimental prototypes and must not make unsupported claims about medical diagnosis, treatment, or clinical accuracy.

About the Organiser Wooble Software Private Limited runs the Wooble challenge platform, which hosts company-sponsored innovation challenges for student and early-career developers. This challenge is listed for Nursio Innovation Pvt Ltd, the healthcare company behind the problem statement.

How to Apply Register and submit through the official Wooble challenge page linked above. Registration closes 8 November 2026; prototype submissions are due 24 October 2026.

Open to students, recent graduates, aspiring developers, and technology enthusiasts in healthcare innovation. Teams of 2–3 members; inter-college and interdisciplinary teams allowed.