HHS Covets Role as 'Data Sugar Daddy' to App Developers

The Health & Human Services Department plans in December to release significantly more health-related data to spur commercial development of new software applications designed to help patients, providers and policymakers make better health care decisions.

National, state and county health performance data sets will be made available via the Internet to HHS's "Health Indicators Warehouse," according to Todd Park, HHS's chief technology officer, who said HHS will also set up a permanent "one stop shop" Web site for public access to community health data and health-related data from other federal agencies.

"We want to keep flooding the market with more and more data from our vaults," said Park, who views government as an enabler of business innovation and a source of support to developers and programmers looking to use public data in useful applications and services.

"We would like to be relegated as rapidly as possible to the role of data sugar daddy," he said at a Oct. 12 conference sponsored by West Wireless Health Institute, a wireless medical technology non-profit research organization.