This work, “Open Health” is a deriviative of “Open Health: stethoscope” by Maria Boehling for opensource.com, used under CC-BY-2.0.
Last week, our friends at PACE Network USA were kind enough to invite me to write a guest blog for their site about open data initiatives and their potential impact on clinical trials. In the post, we mention OpenFDA as an example of the kinds of open data that could be a boon for health-related app developers and patients alike:
Simply put, open data initiatives like openFDA create new opportunities for collaboration, discovery and insight, and could greatly improve clinical trials by increasing researchers’ ability to learn from earlier studies and real-life occurrences. Projects like the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s CancerLinQ and Project Data Sphere (PDS) have already begun to change how oncologists share information with other oncologists. OpenFDA expands on these initiatives by allowing researchers from private companies and research institutions to easily access the wealth of information stored in the FDA’s archives. For patients, this can potentially accelerate access to lifesaving innovation. (from The FDA on Open Data)
Some developer teams have already taken on the task of developing web applications from the available FDA data. Social Health Insights, for example, created what is believed to be the first app based on OpenFDA data within hours of its release.
Lilly Clinical Open Innovation 