A GROUP of medical students from the University of the Philippines was included in the top three of the 2021 Association of Pacific Rim Universities Global Health Case Competition.

Team Mediasina — 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 — created ‘Project Dinig’.

“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,” the team said.

“Our 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,” it added.

Mellissa Withers, APRU Global Health Program Director, said 121 teams from 37 universities participated in the challenge.

“The real-world challenge presented to students was to make a proposal for technology-driven solutions to the Covid19 infodemic,” APRU said in a statement.

“This challenge focuses on addressing the massive amount of misinformation that has quickly spread throughout the world during the Covid19 pandemic, with dramatic negative personal and societal consequences,” it added.

The UP team will be competing with students from Nanyang Technological University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The top three videos were chosen by an international panel of 30 judges. The winning team will be announced on November 18 and gets to receive a $1,000 prize money.

Final scores will include the judges’ scores combined with the votes from the participants of the APRU Global Health Conference 2021.