HHS to expand access to data sets

In an effort to spur development of tools that would improve health decision-making by individuals, groups and government, the federal Health and Human Services Department has announced plans to broaden the categories of data that federal agencies will make available (Source: “HHS plans to offer non-federal health data for innovators,” Government Health IT, Jan. 27, 2011).

HHS anticipated that the new data groups, which will not be specific to an individual’s personal health information, will be used to create applications, Web-based tool, dashboards and other electronic data visualization.

HHS has already posted some data sets, and is constructing a Web portal to be a "one-stop shop" for its data releases, to be located at www.healthdata.gov.