Nearly five years after HHS launched HealthData.gov, the website is receiving an update to its platform and added data capabilities, according to Federal News Radio.
President Obama launched HealthData.gov in 2011 as part of the open government initiative. What started as a site hosting 197 datasets now hosts more than 1,900 datasets and features several apps, according to the report.
However, the portal of the site is out of date, and the government plans to update it to make it more functional. "What we are going to try to do is advance the platform to be something that is going to be more usable, better search, easier access to datasets that also will support more 'liquid' forms of data," said Damon Davis, director for the Health Data Initiative in HHS, in the report. "We really want to support a community of data users. We want to really attract people to a more sticky, more usable platform that's going to allow them to understand how the data can be used from its original way it was collected and curated."
Part of the upgrade centers on transforming data to machine-readable formats instead of using paper-based layouts presented in PDFs, according to the report.
The new platform is expected to go live this summer, Mr. Davis told Federal News Radio.
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