Dutch bank ABN AMRO on Monday announced the winner of the first Hyperledger Hackathon for blockchain applications, which it co-organised along with IBM, Holland Fintech and the Linux Foundation.

Programmers built a practical application for the storage of medical information, controlled and updated by medical experts and patients as owners of the data. The blockchain hackathon was held in Amsterdam on 1 and 2 October.

During the event, teams of students, fintechs, start-ups, and staff from IBM and ABN AMRO built their own application on the open source Hyperledger blockchain infrastructure. They could make use of the knowledge of the blockchain experts of the organising committee. A jury assessed the teams’ efforts and the programmed applications, looking mainly at the value of the application to clients and business and its technical implementation.

The Hackfest in the ABN AMRO Innovation Centre is being held on 3 and 4 October, where blockchain experts will build on the Hyperledger infrastructure. This bi-monthly international event is being held in Europe for the first time, and this time the experts will make use of the experiences gained during the hackathon.

Launched last year, the Hyperledger Project is a collaborative effort created to advance blockchain technology by identifying and addressing important features for a cross-industry open standard for distributed ledgers that can transform the way business transactions are conducted globally. ABN AMRO is a member of Hyperledger.

ABN AMRO said that it is closely monitoring the most important technological developments and sees great potential Hyperledger blockchain technology. It added that collaboration with Hyperledger, IBM and Holland Fintech is yielding new insights and knowledge about this technology.