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Here come the healthcare appsA look at the applications -- and the big opportunities -- showcased at the Community Health Data Forum."People in communities can improve their healthcare if they just have the information to do it," said Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), at the Community Health Data Forum in D.C. last week. The forum took place almost exactly a decade after President Clinton announced he would unscramble global positioning system data (GPS) for civilian use. Now, the potential for private enterprise to provision services using open data from the Community Health Data Initiative could match the billions of dollars made when the government unlocked GPS and NOAA weather data. Last week, in fact, I wrote about how HHS is making community health information as useful as weather data. Sebelius delivered her remarks to both an online audience at HHS.gov/open and the collection of government officials, technologists and researchers gathered at the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Science. Her speech is embedded below. After the jump, learn more about the healthcare apps that were featured at the forum's showcase. Apps that use open health data
Glimpses of a nascent ecosystem of innovation around community health data were on further display in the apps at the Community Health Data Forum. The selections included games, visualizations, web services, crowdsourcing platforms, and smartphone software. Walking around the expo, I learned about the following apps:
The following are six different apps / web services that also caught my eye at the forum. Finding connections with Palantir
Game mechanics and health data
John Valentine, SCVNGR's conference and events manager, says that SCVNGR now has more than 20 million locations in its system and is being downloaded thousands of times daily from the iTunes and Android app stores. In D.C., SCVNGR will be a part of the upcoming Digital Capital Week. Medicare data gets mapped The Community Health Map is being used by HHS internally to visualize and organize data, says Sohit Karol, a PhD student in the kinesthesiology department of the University of Maryland. The video below provides an overview of the core features of Community Health Map, a web application for visualizing Medicare datasets. The tool was developed as a part of a course on Information Visualization at the University of Maryland. More information on the project is available through the class wiki. iTriage puts hospitals in patients' hands
"People are making bad decisions with third-party information," said Hudson at the expo. "The people making those decisions are costing the system money, mostly because they don't have the tools they need to understand." Now, users can get quality reports on doctors, research symptoms, click to see nearby healthcare facilities and, where available, view emergency room wait times. "We're seeing a high level of engagement," said Hudson. "With people using it to find doctors, hospitals and pharmacists. We've seen 2 million page views on mobile already." Hudson said an iTriage API is in development. Pillbox turns FDA drug label data into a platform
David Hale, Pillbox's project manager, says a call to a poison control center for a pharmaceutical identification costs $45. With Pillbox and a web browser, that cost can be substantially reduced. Hale explains more in this video from the USP Annual Scientific Meeting in September 2009: Asthmapolis crowdsources better health for asthma patients
Asthmapolis aggregates the data voluntarily provided by users and gives it to physicians, scientists and health agencies. The goal is to identify environmental exposures that trigger attacks. Asthmapolis has released a web app and its building a mobile phone diary and website for later release to the public. Related:
The opportunities in healthcare IT will be explored at the upcoming OSCON conference. Learn more about OSCON's health track here.
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Comments: 5
Bernard Farrell [17 June 2010 05:31 AM]
TuDiabetes.com has an application for sharing data about A1C tests. The A1C test measures average blood glucose for the previous 90 days. The results are tabulated in a map of the US that shows averages by state. You can see the map here: http://www.TuAnalyze.org.
Marcia Noyes [18 June 2010 02:20 PM]
Alex,
Thank you for including iTriage in your blog post. Our staff has worked very diligently to get the government health data in our nationwide database that includes every hospital, urgent care, retail clinic, physician and pharmacy.
I believe that by adding this important information we further empower healthcare consumers.
We appreciate you including iTriage.
Marcia Noyes, PR and Marketing Diector
Sohit Karol [27 June 2010 05:14 PM]
Hi Alex,
Thanks for covering the Community Health Map on this post!
Here is another project from the same class wiki based on the Recovery.gov data set that the readers would find interesting:
http://bit.ly/c2ntP1
(The wiki asks for a security exception!)
Best,
Sohit Karol
Graduate Student, University of Maryland, College Park
Sohit Karol [27 June 2010 05:43 PM]
I wanted to point out a small typo in the name of my department in the following sentence:
"The Community Health Map is being used by HHS internally to visualize and organize data, says Sohit Karol, a PhD student in the kinesthesiology department of the University of Maryland."
The correct department name should be kinesiology.
Thanks again!
Sohit
Damian75 [21 March 2011 02:51 AM]
Saw this list of health apps. Great for everyday stuff:
http://knol.google.com/k/g%C3%A1bor-vajda/health-applications-for-your-iphone/axrq4ices01/1#