Blog Entries

For the past three years, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department (HHS) has been liberating vast amounts of data for public use, which can be found here on HealthData.gov. Our theory is that if we take the vast stores of data HHS already has, stripped out the personal information and made it available to developers, the data would then be used to create incredible tools; and that’s exactly what’s happened.  Since focusing on liberating data, more than 200 applications have been developed with the use public health data. 
To illustrate the true power of liberated data, periodically, organizations and individuals that have taken open health data and made it useful to communities, consumers and providers will be featured on HealthData.gov.  First in a series of applications to be featured on HealthData.gov is the Healthy Communities Network, which won “Best Community Health App” at this year’s Health Datapalooza. Read more »

Last week, the first official meeting of the Subcommittee on Data Access and Use, a subcommittee of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, met in Silver Spring, Maryland to discuss how the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) data is accessed and utilized.  The subcommittee is charged with providing recommendations to HHS on how to make health data more readily available and accessible. 
They represent members of the start-up, tech, academic, business, government, and healthcare community.  Such diversity will provide broad perspectives and experiences about the different aspects of health data.
Earlier in the day, the sub-committee heard from U.S. Chief Technology Officer, Todd Park, in which the group discussed access and the use of data.  Among the discussed topics to be explored further, include: Read more »

No longer are health records something that sit in a folder in your doctor’s office never to see the light of day! The power of having personal health data at your finger tips is a new and growing phenomenon with help from Medicare Blue Button.  Blue Button allows Medicare beneficiaries to access their health data on a website or mobile device and download their personal health data from a personal health record or from their doctors’, hospital’s or clinical laboratory’s patient portal.  Since its launch, hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries have downloaded their personal health data.  The power of personal health data has taken another step forward, with new opportunities between beneficiaries and their providers as demonstrated at Health Datapalooza III with the announcement of the Blue Button Mash Up Challenge. Read more »