HHS and the quasi-governmental Institute of Medicine are joining forces to share public-health data in hopes of spurring development of social media, smartphones and other IT tools for health improvement.

The two entities last week launched the Community Health Data Initiative, a public-private partnership that will connect IT developers with vast storehouses of publicly available health data. As part of the effort, HHS this year will create the Health Indicators Warehouse, which Secretary Kathleen Sebelius calls a "one-stop data shop" for information on national, state and local indicators of health status, such as smoking and obesity rates, healthcare utilization and access to healthy food.

"The goal is to make the gigabytes of health data our nation generates accessible and productive. Information is the key to awareness about health and action to improve health," IOM President Harvey Fineberg said at a launch event in Washington last week. "The information technology sector has the creativity and skills to turn raw data into games, websites and other applications that make information easily attainable and usable," Fineberg added in a prepared statement.

"Our national health data constitute a precious resource that we are paying billions to assemble, but then too often wasting," Sebelius said, according to CMIO. "When information sits on the shelves of government offices, it is underperforming. We need to bring these data alive. If made easily accessible by the public, our data can help raise awareness of health status and trigger efforts to improve it."

For further details:
- take a look at this CMIO story
- read this IOM press release
- visit the HHS Community Health Data Initiative website

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