Illinois Public Health Datapalooza and a $10k Challenge

Raed Mansour Talking About a Day in the Life at the Chicago Department of Public Health at the Illinois Health Datapalooza at 1871 Chicago

Raed Mansour Talking About a Day in the Life at the Chicago Department of Public Health at the Illinois Health Datapalooza at 1871 Chicago

For the second day of the “Making Public Health Data Work in Illinois” event, Smart Chicago helped to MC a Datapalooza event that brought together technologists and health care practitioners to put into practice the ideas discussed on day one.

The morning sessions were about sharing skills between technologists and health care practitioners. These included sessions from Socrata, ESRI, and a session on Healthdata.gov from Damon Davis. We also had sessions that focused on the daily challenges of providing health care including a “Day in the Life” session from Raed Mansour.

The afternoon sessions were geared towards brainstorming ideas for building health apps. You can see the different ideas (and notes for the whole day) on our on-going google doc.

Unconference session on leapfrogging electronic medical records

Unconference session on leapfrogging electronic medical records

The Making Public Health Data Work Challenges

All this brainstorming around civic health apps leads up the the Making Public Health Data Work Challenges.

For the first challenge, The Illinois Department of Public Health, Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are awarding $10,000 to the team that builds the app the provides the best use of health data in solving a problem faced by health care community in Illinois. There is an additional $5,000 being awarded for the runner-up. You can enter this challenge by filling out this entry form.

For the second challenge, Esri is offering a prize for the best app based on the Esri platform. The winner will get to choose from one of two prizes: a seat at the 2014 Esri Developer Summit, or a seat in an Esri instructor led online class. These prizes are both valued at approximately $1,000. Developers will be able to leverage Esri developer tools, e.g., the JavaScript API for cross-platform deployment, or the device-specific mobile SDKs for iOS and Android. You can enter this challenge by filling out this form.

Here are some guidelines for the challenge:

  • The deadline for the challenge is November 30th.
  • Entries must use health data either from a city, state, or federal source such as healthdata.gov.
  • Web apps don’t necessarily have to be complete.
  • Apps that have a better chance of becoming a real product used by healthcare practitioners or residents will be judged more highly.

If you have any questions about the challenge, feel free to ask us by emailing Christopher Whitaker.

Making Public Health Data Work in Illinois Day 1 Roundup

Stephen Konya speaking at 1871 during the "Making Public Health Data Work" event

IDPH Chief of Staff Stephen Konya speaking at 1871 during the “Making Public Health Data Work” event

This past weekend, health care policy makers, practitioners, and technologists gathered together at 1871 to talk about how we could make public health data work here in Illinois.

The event was hosted by a number of partners including the Health Data Consortium, Illinois Department of Public Health, the California HealthCare Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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Call to Action: Help OSM map areas hit by Typhoon Haiyan

Typhoon Haiyan

Typhoon Haiyan, photo by Karen Nyberg/NASA

While we’ve featured OpenStreetMap before, what you may not know is the important role they play during disasters.

During a disaster, the Humanitarian OpenSteetMap Team (HOT) activates to help coordinate mapping of disaster areas. These activities include mapping out roads, buildings, locations of refugee camps, and other resources. In addition, they also maintain a wiki with information about the disaster. To get an idea of what this looks like, here’s what the OSM community did after the earthquake in Haiti.

OpenStreetMap – Project Haiti from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

Currently, OpenStreetMap is looking for people to help in this effort. If you have an OpenStreetMap account, you can log into the OSM Tasking Manager and select tasks. Most of the current tasks involve tracing buildings and roads to help relief workers on the ground navigate.

If you don’t have an OpenStreetMap account, you can sign up for an account for free here. OpenStreetMap is easy to use and there are several tutorials available, including this one by Chicago’s very own Ian Dees.

If you have time available, please consider spending some time assisting OSM in the effort. For questions directly relating to the HOT Team at OSM, you can email them at [email protected].

Livestream of “Putting Health Data to Work in Our States and Communities”

This Friday, the Health Data Consortium will be hosting a two-day event that will talk about how to Put Health Data to Work in our Communities. As we move through the day, we’ll post the videos below. Our broadcast will begin at 8:30am CST. If you don’t see the newest stream, please refresh your browser.

Afternoon Panel 3 (at 3:05)

Previous videos below:
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