docs/idea.md

Develop a medical-symptom MCP server that takes patient-entered symptoms, maps them to ICD-10 codes via a local knowledge base, and returns a JSON of probable diagnoses with confidence scores.

Verdict: Your medical symptom → ICD-10 MCP server idea appears to be a strong candidate for winning. It aligns with a high-impact, real-world problem, demonstrates a structured use of AI (which highlights technical skill), and can be made user-friendly as an API/tool. It’s also something you’re motivated by (you even have a PhD contact interested in it), which is important for execution. Furthermore, since another team is working on clinical triage, it validates the domain – but you can differentiate your project by focusing on ICD-10 coding and confidence scoring, giving it a unique edge.

To win: Highlight the Use of Credits/Tech in Submission: Explicitly mention in your README or presentation how you utilized the provided resources. For example: “This project was built using Modal’s cloud GPUs to preprocess data, OpenAI’s GPT-4 for code validation (using hackathon API credits), and LlamaIndex for efficient retrieval.” This not only gives credit to the sponsors (good etiquette) but also reinforces that you made the most of the hackathon’s offerings – a trait of a resourceful hacker.