Upcoming Digital Health Opportunities: Codeathons And The SXSW Accelerator

For the past three years, through the Health Data Initiative, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has focused on the liberation of health data.  This effort has focused on making data from HHS holdings more easily available without affecting privacy or confidentiality of individuals.  The intention is that entrepreneurs, developers, researchers and policy makers will take the newly liberated data and create web or mobile applications, products and services to help improve health for consumers, communities and service providers. Since 2010, over 300 data sets have been uploaded to HealthData.gov and in addition to the many events and examples of health data being leveraged than ever before.

An upcoming event where we are encouraging entrepreneurs and developers to take advantage of a great digital health opportunity is South by Southwest’s (SXSW) Accelerator. All the details can be found here, but SXSW is looking for startups that have “created patient-centric health applications and technologies that connect patients, families, physicians, pharmacists, care providers (hospitals, clinics) and benefit providers to share timely, relevant health data and drive better outcome at affordable and sustainable cost levels.”...