HHS recently launched its new Health Indicators Warehouse at http://healthindicators.gov, creating a single point of access to data sets from more than 170 U.S. federal government sources. Researchers, technology developers, and policymakers can now download and analyze data on 1200 health indicators.
Availability of the data is expected to trigger a new wave of innovation and application development. Use of the data is being encouraged, for example, via entries in the Health 2.0 Developers Challenge partnership.
Indicators include population-level data (such as life expectancy, mortality, and disease incidence), data on determinants of health (such as behaviors and environmental factors), and data on the health care system (such as access, cost, quality, and use). The data come from a variety of programs, such as Healthy People 2020, County Health Rankings, the Community Health Status Indicators initiative, and Medicare.
Users can find indicators by topic, geographic location of source data, the government initiative that generated the data, or by general keyword searching. Tabs allow browsing the indicators by category with filters for drill-down. For a given data set, an overview explains the scope of the data and the methodology behind its development. Data source profiles identify the purpose of each research initiative, its study methodologies, and the periods for which data are available.
The interface allows users to interact with the data (depending on the nature of specific data sets) and view information in in map or chart form. Programmers can access the data using SOAP or REST web services.
FAQs are available, as well as detailed how-to information in the Health Indicators Warehouse User's Guide.
The announcement of the site by HHS Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and comments from leaders in health and government information applaud the potentials ahead for leveraging government-generated health data to make the most of the investment in it.
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