Setting Free the Data Sets

The Department of Health & Human Services tracks a torrent of health data, ranging from hospital quality indicators, pharmaceutical sales activity, breast cancer incidence, you name it. And for decades, such data has been shuttled to and from government program offices and the healthcare community as the grist of health policymaking.

Until recently, that is. With the announcement last month of its Community Health Data Initiative (CHDI), HHS has begun to pry the doors off some of its information storage sheds, inviting developers of Web services, mobile phone apps and social media to have at the data in the hopes it will yield tools and services that help the public make better decisions about their healthcare.

"Just making it known that we have this data that's available and turning it into a form that is easily accessible can spark huge amounts of innovation, and on top of that, unleash even more data," said Todd Park, HHS's chief technology officer. HHS's CHDI datasets are available from its Open Government Web site (www.hhs.gov/open), part of a broader effort by the administration to let the public access more federal information.