Data Roundtable Brings Together State And Local Leaders At HHS

By Visakh Madathil

Today, in coordination with the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE), the HHS Office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) convened a roundtable discussion on data sharing policies and data-driven solutions related to the opioid crisis.

The roundtable brought together experts from federal, state, and local government, the private sector, nonprofit organizations, and academia to: (1) Explore possibilities and limits of data sharing, and (2) Define challenges, successes, and proposed solutions for using data to address the opioid crisis.

The roundtable builds off the work of the HHS Opioid Symposium and Code-a-Thon. At the Code-a-Thon over 50 teams from across the country worked with over 70 data sets for 24 hours to develop innovative data and technology solutions to address the opioid crisis. The three winning teams from the Code-a-Thon joined the roundtable to share how their innovative solutions have been implemented since the Code-a-Thon.

The HHS Office of the CTO is committed to fostering the use of data for social good while also advancing the goals of the ReImagine HHS effort to "Get Better Insights from Better Data". The Office of the CTO is leading a Department-wide effort to better understand how HHS is using and sharing its own data to make more evidence-based policy decisions. The roundtable served as part of this ongoing effort. Through strategic collaboration, such as this roundtable with CODE, HHS can leverage technology and increased data sharing to solve complex problems.

For more information on the work that the Office of the CTO is doing to break down data silos at HHS visit https://www.hhs.gov/cto/initiatives/data-initiative/index.html