Although he is now the Federal Chief Technology Officer, Park still keeps involved in the healthcare community by creating the Health Data Initiative (HDI) Forum and the annual Health Datapalooza event, which is a public-private collaboration that encourages innovators to utilize health data to develop applications to raise awareness of health and health system performance and spark community action to improve health.
Q: What is on the horizon for HHS? What is the biggest innovation in progress in the effort to revolutionize the release and use of health data?
Park: HHS has been the lead agency for the health data initiative and is continuing to expand the amount of data that is being available, readable and is continuing to broaden awareness of entrepreneurs, innovators and the public about this data and its availability as resource to power innovation. There’s a lot going on there across multiple dimensions.
Q: Among your achievements at HHS were the launch of programs such as the consumer website HealthCare.gov, the Health Data Initiative and the HDI forum. What was the thought process behind the creation of these projects and how did they come to fruition?
Park: Well, HealthCare.gov was a requirement of The Affordable Care Act so that’s where that project came from. The Health Data Initiative came from earlier conversations that I had with Bill Corr, deputy secretary of HHS, who really wanted us to think about how HHS can deliver higher social return on all of the data that HHS had as a priority. There were other ideas that were germinated from innovative career civil servants at HHS who came to me with amazing ideas, which we then crystalized and put into action. Something that I’ve learned from this is that great ideas can come form anywhere and anyone and as innovation leaders, it is very important to look everywhere for the next great idea that can then be turned into something wonderful for the American people.
Q: What is on the horizon for HHS? What is the biggest innovation in progress in the effort to revolutionize the release and use of health data?
Park: HHS has been the lead agency for the health data initiative and is continuing to expand the amount of data that is being available, readable and is continuing to broaden awareness of entrepreneurs, innovators and the public about this data and its availability as resource to power innovation. There’s a lot going on there across multiple dimensions.
For example, CMS (Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services), which is part of HHS, has very powerful data and has just launched a new office called The Office for Information Products and Data Analytics. This is an office that is dedicated to improving access to and utilization of data, both internally at CMS and externally, in order to improve health and
care.
care.
Q: Among your achievements at HHS were the launch of programs such as the consumer website HealthCare.gov, the Health Data Initiative and the HDI forum. What was the thought process behind the creation of these projects and how did they come to fruition?
Park: Well, HealthCare.gov was a requirement of The Affordable Care Act so that’s where that project came from. The Health Data Initiative came from earlier conversations that I had with Bill Corr, deputy secretary of HHS, who really wanted us to think about how HHS can deliver higher social return on all of the data that HHS had as a priority. There were other ideas that were germinated from innovative career civil servants at HHS who came to me with amazing ideas, which we then crystalized and put into action. Something that I’ve learned from this is that great ideas can come form anywhere and anyone and as innovation leaders, it is very important to look everywhere for the next great idea that can then be turned into something wonderful for the American people.
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