This blog was first posted on http://www.hhs.gov/open on June 9, 2011 (perma-link: http://www.hhs.gov/open/discussion/2nd_annual_health_data_initiative.html)

Almost exactly one year ago, we launched a vital new HHS Open Government effort: The Health Data Initiative (HDI). The Initiative was publicly launched by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Deputy Secretary Bill Corr, Institute of Medicine  (IoM) President Harvey Fineberg, and White House CTO Aneesh Chopra at a forum held at the National Academy of Sciences.  

This Thursday, June 9th, innovators and entrepreneurs alike will gather at the National Institutes of Health for the 2nd Annual Health Data Initiative. The hundreds attending in person will be joined by 10 universities  hosting viewing parties, and encourage you to join us from one of these satellite locations or at HHS.gov/live where we will be live streaming the entire event beginning at 9 a.m. ET. You can also follow the conversation on twitter where @HealthDataGov will be live tweeting the event. Hashtag #healthapps.

The Health Data Initiative is an incredibly exciting public-private collaboration that is encouraging innovators to utilize data made publicly available by HHS and others to help fuel applications and services that can help improve health and health care. Over the past year HHS has been working very hard to make our data ever more accessible to the public – both publishing brand new data and making more of our existing data machine-readable, downloadable, accessible via application programming interfaces (APIs), free, and vastly easier to find. We’ve launched major new data and information websites (the HealthData.gov community, the Health Indicators Warehouse; and HealthCare.gov).

Equally importantly, we’ve been energetically publicizing our data, through challenges, code-a-thons, and many sessions with innovators of all kinds – educating folks around the country about what data we’ve made available and its potential to help power health improvement.  Innovators from across America are taking our data and are using it to build and power an amazing and rapidly growing array of applications in creative and powerful ways to help advance health.   This movement has included entrepreneurs and change makers from all sectors: startups, major businesses, nonprofits, public health, health care delivery system, federal and local government, and academia.

Multiple major new challenges or “action beats” will also be announced by government and non-government entities, so you will want to tune in live to the meeting.

There has never been a better time to be an innovator and entrepreneur at the intersection of health, health care and data. A combination of historic polices such as the Affordable Care Act, HITECH Act, Open Government Directive, and Strategy for American Innovation are contributing to an environment of unprecedented opportunity for innovators. We hope you will join the growing community of American innovators who are jumping into the work of helping to improve health through the power of information!  See you (online or in person) at the Forum!