Health 2.0 Honors Data Visionaries

Last week, San Francisco was home to the Fall 2010 Health 2.0 Conference, which showcases cutting-edge technologies in health care.

Headlining this fall’s event were a session and luncheon honoring the winners of the federal Health and Human Services Department’s Health 2.0 Developer Challenge. The project challenged organizations nationwide to develop applications to support the Community Health Data Initiative (CHDI). The CHDI is an HHS program aimed at helping Americans understand health issues locally, and take action to improve health in their communities.

The winners are shining examples of the power of data and how, if data are made accessible, they can change lives.

The challenge winners included:

• County Health Rankings, a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin, that ranks health indicators for all counties in all states. Developers were challenged with creating apps or widgets that would make that information easily accessible on the technological platforms (iPads, smart phones, etc) that people already use to make informed decisions.
  The winning app was developed by Acys Healthcare and displays health rankings based on the GPS location of the user, and the county they are in.

• Catch and Hope Labs challenged developers to develop an app that encourages users to get up and moving, and then tracks that movement. Winner Happy Feet from Stanford University proposed an app that allows users to track activities and earn achievements, as well as be social via Facebook to see how friends using the app are doing.

In addition to these ingenious ideas, there were four other winners.

Posted by Felicity Simmons

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