Health Datapalooza 2014: 10 takeaways

Health Datapalooza 2014: 10 takeaways

Health data enthusiasm was out in full force at the 5th annual Health Datapalooza (our 4th!), as 2,000 policy officials, non-profits, academics, data innovators, physicians, patient advocates, and healthcare business leaders descended upon D.C. to discuss the future of healthcare data.

2014 was the year of the selfie, as Bryan Sivak kicked off the conference in style with a noble attempt to best Ellen. Todd Park followed with a speech recognizing the health data pioneers who have laid the groundwork for the current moment of opportunity, setting the stage for exciting announcements about OpenFDA (this is big!), RWJF’s investment in the Health Data Exploration project, and the first data science community for healthcare, DocGraph Alliance.  Meanwhile, making huge health data news on another coast, Apple unveiled HealthKit during the conference, which was widely discussed on conference panels and in the Twittersphere.

We enjoyed powerful keynotes by Vinod Khosla, Atul Gwande, Katherine Sebelius, and Jonathan Bush, among many others, and were thrilled to co-host events throughout the day in the Health Data Challenges room, where we spoke with experts of all stripes who shared their best practices on open innovation in healthcare.

We’ve put together our 10 takeaways from the conference below, and here is a full list of roundups by Pew Research Center’s Suzannah Fox.

Thank you to our friends and partners, Dwayne Spaulding and the Health Data Consortium team, for putting together a terrific conference this year.