HHS on a mission to liberate health data -- GCN

" ... According to Damon Davis, the director for the health data initiative at HHS, HealthData.gov is a catalog of health, social services and research data made available to the public to improve the country’s health. The relaunch includes user-friendly tools and updates the platform’s underlying technology for more efficient performance, Davis said in a blog, in an effort to nurture more applications, products and services capable of enhancing health care. The project started with the migration of the catalog content to the DKAN open data and open source platform, which is the same technology used by Data.gov. New data, like the latest in medical and scientific knowledge, clinical care provider quality, health service provider directories, community health performance information and government spending are now available. The design and features of HealthData.gov will continue to improve based on the beta version’s workability and feedback. In time, Davis said, the site will include better search and sort tools, charts and maps, linkage to other relative datasets and, possibly, a system for requesting and discussing data. Late last year HHS.gov got a refresh, shifting to responsive design and building a new, open 'table' tag in the CSS to handle the number and variety of tabular presentations. That code snippet is available on the Mobile Code Sharing Catalog so other agencies can use it for their efforts. Recent improvements include new mobile-first design, making it accessible on a multitude of devices and networks. Along with smart search and tools for easier engagement and content sharing, HHS purged of 154,000 obsolete files to make search faster and more relevant. The information has been filtered and organized by topic so users can quickly find exactly what they need ..."