Open Data and Health

Carlos Royo, Director of Business Development of Health at GMV, organized and moderated the panel discussion “Open Data and Health IODC16”, the international event of greater relevance on open data that this year has been entitled 'Global goals, local impact'. The challenges and opportunities that are capable of generating data to leverage open production and expand the use of official statistics to support Sustainable Development Goals (ODS) were evaluated. It also highlighted the role of government at the opening, which helps generate countless opportunities for creating new business models and gives value to the citizen, such as to know how public money is spent; the fate of donations in a natural disaster or viewing market prices of medicines, among others. In the case of health, the reuse of data can save 7,000 lives a year by improving the health response.

The reasons why the application of open data has not increased much in the field of health than in other sectors, was another area in which deepened. Among the conclusions drawn, was concluded on the need to involve the patient with health empowering, furnish all information about your health, because "it is proven that patients respond better to treatment when they are informed," said Rafael Bengoa, Minister of Health of the Basque Government. Meanwhile, Johanna Pepper, Director of Government in line with the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of Colombia, stressed the need to gain the trust of citizens/patients and explained the strategic lines to achieve this goal included country program "Vive Digital".

Data empower citizens and politicians to make decisions, therefore, he emphasized the need for health lead the use of ICT in the heart of the business. The OpenTrials project, which aims to produce a database on information from clinical trials wordwide, open, easy to use and connected, was one of the examples that were put as a tool of patient empowerment.

About IODC 2016

The International Open Data Conference (IODC) is the essential meeting point for the global community to debate and study the future of open data. Titled “Global goals, local impact”, the fourth IODC will reconvene our expanding community to showcase successes, confront shared challenges, and help ensure that our vision and our diverse initiatives continue to coordinate effectively.

The conference helped to shape out the international roadmap initiated by the Open Data for Development in the previous conference. The opening speech, given by the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and the Information Society, Víctor Calvo-Sotelo, underlined the fact that the open data sector has a 1.6 billion euro direct impact on Spain’s economy. Seven hundred million euros of this figure and 5000 jobs were directly related with the databases published in 2015.

The event, organized by the Spanish Ministry for Industry, Energy and Tourism together with the World Bank, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of the Government of Canada and the Open Data for Development Network (OD4D) brought together over 1500 guests from a hundred different countries.