HHS, NIH officials tout support for mobile health

Photo Credit: FNIH

Describing his mission as one of "data liberación," HHS Chief Technology Officer Todd Park said he is expecting mobile technology developers to take up the Obama administration on its offer to free terabytes of electronic information from federal health databases.

"HHS sits on an extraordinary array of data that, if made easily accessible to the public, could help consumers, patients, providers and community leaders make better decisions to improve health," Park said Monday at the mHealth Summit in Washington. "It's the goal of our open health data initiative to do exactly that."

Park said to expect HealthData.gov to debut next month, making data "easily accessible and downloadable." And since the information is in the public domain, there will be no worries about violating intellectual property, he added.

During the same conference, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins highlighted how his agency is supporting more m-health projects. According to Enterprise Mobile Today, NIH awarded fewer than 30 grants for mobile health IT projects in 2005. This year, Collins said NIH will hand out 150 such grants. "We expect these numbers will continue to grow," Collins told the summit, which has about 2,000 registrants. "This is all moving quite rapidly."

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- check out this Enterprise Mobile Today story