Open Data, Innovation, and Health Datapalooza
One of the Department of Health & Human Services’ (HHS) current initiatives is the Health Data Initiative (HDI). It was launched in 2010 with the Institute of Medicine (IOM). The involved and interested formed the Community Health Data Initiative that is now the Health Data consortium. The Consortium includes 17 organizations that encourage innovators to utilize health data to develop applications to raise awareness of health and health system performance and spark community action to improve health. This year the Consortium is the sponsor of Health Datapalooza IV. And this year Datapalooza will be at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington DC, on June 3-6.
The A-Listers are all showing up for the annual event that will focus on how to use data to help patients engage in their own health. They will be talking a great deal about the Blue Button and Blue Button+ initiatives that allow patients to view, download and transmit their own health data. Returning to speak on policy this year will be Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, newly appointed CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, US Chief Technology Officer, Todd Park. Taking on the subject of Technology & Open Government will be HHS Chief Technology Officer, Bryan Sivak and ONC Farzad Mostashari. See all the speakers for the event.
ONC is sponsoring a Code-a-Palooza with Socrata for the first ever live codeathon at Datapalooza. Ten teams will be selected to compete for $25,000 in prizes at the code-a-thon. The selected teams will compete to build an app, tool, or product that could be directly used by primary care providers and/or their office staff to improve the quality of care they deliver to their patients using Medicare data. The exact topic for the Health Datapalooza Code-a-Palooza will be announced on June 2nd at the start of Health Datapalooza IV.
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