Open Health Data: An International Snapshot

The 2009 Digital Britain Report described data as ‘an innovation currency’ and ‘the lifeblood of the knowledge economy.’  We are now in 2013 and while there is tremendous buzz around open data in general, open health data is definitely lagging behind.

I have been a great proponent of the movement for a number of years after being inspired by Todd Park at a Health 2.0 NYC Chapter event. But it really clicked with me when I saw three young entrepreneurs mashup various environmental and health data, create an MVP app in 6 hours and win two prizes at an open data hackathon. These three students are on their way to starting a company and making a difference in this world while helping healthcare consumers make better decisions in their everyday lives. This is the power of open health data! We, the citizens, ultimately own the data, not our governments and while there is certainly a need to preserve our privacy, there is a lot of “innovation currency” locked up in vaults, desperately waiting to be unleashed.

Above you will find a brief report (50 slides, but don’t get scared!) that Katarzyna Rabczuk and I put together.  It showcases how nascent this movement really is, while showing samples of social and economic impacts of these initiatives across the US, UK and a select few Western European countries picked at random. The United States is undoubtedly leading the way with HealthData.gov and almost 400 valuable datasets published, ranging from Medicare data to epidemiology. Health Datapallooza is already turning 4 with the next event taking place in June of this year...