Open Health Data's Gone Global
You may already know that Health Datapalooza is the place to be for US-based data enthusiasts (and geeks), but did you know that it's also attracting thought leaders from around the world? Health Datapalooza 2015 will draw academics, government officials and entrepreneurs from seven countries: Canada, China, France, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom (as you may have read about in an earlier post) and the United States. Ambassador Jimmy Kolker, Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) noted, "Increasing the level of international participation in Health Datapalooza allows us to tap into the best ideas from around the globe, empowering entrepreneurs to share ideas across sectors and address pressing health challenges with open health data." This year's meeting features several exciting international activities, including:
- HHS, the UK's NHS and the de Beaumont Foundation will make an exciting announcement on the morning of June 1 on the main stage. This activity is part of a collaboration formalized by a memorandum of understanding between HHS and NHS which focuses on both countries sharing quality indicators, liberating data and putting it to work, adopting digital health systems, and priming the health IT market.
- A session on June 1 at 3:20pm addressing Copyright Issues and Customer Outcome Data have been addressed in the US and the UK in relation to Patient Reported Outcome Measures.
- A session focused on Using Open Health Data to Inform Decisionmaking for Development Projects on June 1 at 3:20pm led by the USAID Chief Data Officer, Brandon Pustejovsky
- A panel on Promoting Innovation and Entrepreneurship in India using Open Health Data on June 2 at 1:05 pm featuring senior representatives from the Government of India
Over the past six years, HHS has built extensive experience through its Health Data Initiative (including successes, failures and lessons learned) about persuading U.S. government agencies to release health data and encouraging entrepreneurs and innovators to use it. We are eager to share these experiences with our international counterparts and to explore how we can work together to encourage the development of applications and services that can improve the health of people around the world. HHS is particularly interested to identify partners who can help develop new methodologies and approaches to address unique health challenges in resource-constrained environments and underserved populations. The Health Datapalooza began in 2010 as part of the HHS IDEA Lab's Health Data Initiative. To learn more, click here.
