Todd Park: HHS aims to be NOAA

Forty-five new and updated health applications that harness the power of open data from HHS and other sources are being presented Thursday at the 2nd Annual Health Data Initiative Forum in New York.

The initiative was opened by Matt Miller, host of NPR's Left, Right & Center, who called the work being presented "the beginning of enormous sets of innovative data" being used to "touch all our lives as patients."

As Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine put it, if you were to zero in on a "single slogan" for today, it would be that "information shall set you free. However, only if you can use it."