An Open Health Challenge

There is a treasure trove of high-value health information sitting on health.data.gov just waiting to be put to use. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) have been involved in a project designed to free health data from government archive silos and put it into the hands of innovators and entrepreneurs to facilitate growth and development of the healthcare ecosystem. The hope is that new applications, products, and services will be developed to advance healthcare education, to influence health behaviors, and to improve performance of the healthcare system and our health outcomes.

The available data includes a range of information such as national, state, regional, and county-level prevalence of disease, the quality of healthcare, and its cost, as well as evidence-based programs and policies that have improved performance across many of these measures.

At last week's second Health Data Initiative Forum, several new challenges were issued. So if you're interested in marrying health data and technology, its time to roll up your sleeves and get to work innovating.