The deBeaumont Foundation www.debeaumont.org in collaboration with the Health Data Consortium (HDC) www.healthdataconsortium.org and HHS www.hhs.gov announced the “Obesity Data Challenge”, a joint U.S. England initiative to tackle the adult obesity epidemic at Health Datapalooza 2015.
The Obesity Data Challenge is part of two parallel prize-based competitions running in both countries, which is led by the National Health Service (NHS) www.nhs.uk in England and their organizing partner Rewired State www.rewiredstate.org.
Each country’s challenge participants can use open data to develop new data visualization tools to give communities, local health officials, along with patients and practitioners new means to improve population health.
In the U.S Challenge, HDC and the de Beaumont Foundation are seeking solutions to enable healthcare professionals and local health officials to help patients and families address the obesity epidemic at both a personal and community level.
Entrants are encouraged to use open government data sets from HealthData.gov alternatively, and can propose to make data they already collect available to the public under an open reuse license.
“The Obesity Data Challenge represents a true milestone in our collaboration with the UK. The healthcare systems may differ, but there are opportunities in health data to build solutions and tools to bring together providers and consumers to address obesity in both countries,” said HHS Acting Deputy Secretary Mary Wakefield, PhD, R.N.
In the U.S Challenge, competing participants can submit entries by July 31, 2015 which must contain at least one piece of open government data from a government agency. The best submissions will be awarded as determined by a panel of judges. A multi-tiered award of $40,000 will divided among five winners. Winners of both the U.S. and England Obesity Data Challenges will be announced September 2015.
For more information, go to http://bit.ly/1GKdqGX or to lean about England’s Challenge, go to http://obesityChallenge.RewiredState.org