HHS Launches Health.Data.gov to Share Open Health Data

Last October, Todd Park, the chief technology officer at the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) announced HealthData.gov at the HealthCamp in San Francisco. Today, Health.Data.gov went live. (When the domain name propagates properly through the Internet, HealthData.gov will send online users directly to the new community at Data.gov.)

Park blogged about HealthData.gov and the open health data initiative on Data.gov this morning.

"HealthData.gov is a one-stop resource for the growing ecosystem of innovators who are turning data into new applications, services, and insights that can help improve health," he wrote.

The new open health data site includes community features and links to more than a thousand indicators at HealthIndicators.gov and a health apps showcase.

New apps like iTriage have the potential to turn open health data to better decisions and build new businesses. Speaking at the State Department's open source conference last week, Park said that tens of thousands of citizens have now used the health data in iTriage to find community health centers.

Park has been working to make community health information as useful as weather data through the release of open health data from HSS. Today, the nation now can see more about what the tech community has come up since this spring, when the question of whether "there's a healthcare app for that" was answered the first time. "Social value and economic value can go hand in hand," he told a health IT summit in San Francisco.

Below, Park speaks more about what open health data could mean at last weekend's health 2.0 code-a-thon in Washington, DC.

Here come the healthcare apps.