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:
Continue reading

Health Datapalooza: Deep dive into health data

In preparation for the Illinois Health Datapalooza, we wanted to take a deep dive into the different kinds of health data already available  to developers at the state, local, and federal level.  A big part of the datapalooza will be determine what we can do with health data.

CUTGroup 3: Chicago Health Atlas

Healthdata.gov

Healthdata.gov is the federal health portal run by the US Department of Health and Human Services. The federal government plays an outsized role in the healthcare field in part by managing Medicare and Medicaide. When a patient received a medical treatment and the federal government pays for it, HHS collects that data. They’ve released this dataset (Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) Provider Summary) to show the vast variation in cost between different service providers.  This particular data set has a well documented API to show how the data was constructed and what each field means.

There are also datasets that get deep into the minutiae of the day to day operations of the health care system. RxNorm is a query tool that’s used to provide normalized names for different pharmacy management systems. (So that if one pharmacy system calls it one name, you can quickly determine it’s name in another system.)

HospitalCompare

Healthdata.gov also provides the raw data that powers the Medicare Hospital Comparison tool. The tool allows patients to look for the best hospitals possible.

The healthdata.gov site continues to expand it’s offers and will be a great resource for developers, data scientists, and researchers going into the future.

Data.Illinois.Gov

The state’s data portal has 60 different datasets relating to health care. Many of these datasets are directories for different services such as hospitals, hospice care, and rural health centers.

Other datasets include interesting historical health information such as infant mortality  rates from 1907 to 2008,  divorce rates from 1958-2009,  and births by county in 2009.

Data.CookCountyIl.Gov

Bilingual Cook County Hospital Sign

The Cook County data portal has a number of datasets that stem from their administration of the Cook County Health and Hospital System. For example, the county has data about the cost of services for those detailed by the Cook County Sheriff’s Office,  causes of death in 2009,  and Cook County Vaccination Partners.

Data.CityofChicago.org

Auburn Gresham Chicago Health Atlas

The City of Chicago data portal also has several datasets that have health care implications. They include location-based data such as warming center locations, substance abuse treatment facilities,  and flu shot locations.

The city also has a number of datasets about the prevalence of health conditions within the city.  Many of these datasets, such as diabetes hospitalizations,  asthma hospitalizations, and low-birth rates,  are used to power the Chicago Health Atlas.

What’s NOT on the portals

Admittedly, there is not enough open data available on the various portals to be as innovative as our public health sector needs to be. Part of the mission of the Health Data Consortium is to foster the availability of health data and to build an ecosystem of health care innovation.  So, in addition to talking about data that’s already available, the datapalooza is a perfect opportunity to talk about data not currently available.

There are still slots available for both days.  You can find the registration link for the November 8th event here and the November 9th event here.

Two Great Illinois-Focused Health Data Events

U.S. CTO Todd Park at Healthbox Investor Day here in Chicago

U.S. CTO Todd Park at Healthbox Investor Day here in Chicago

There are two great statewide health data events coming up on November 8 and 9 in Chicago.

Putting Health Data to Work in Our States and Communities

First up, on Friday, November 8, is A Health Data Consortium Event: Putting Health Data to Work in Our States and Communities.

The event is organized in partnership with the Health Data Consortium, the State of Illinois, the California HealthCare Foundation, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It’s a gathering of thought leaders from the private, nonprofit, and government sectors confronting the most pressing health data issues in the U.S. health care system at the state and local level.

The day-long event will be the first of a series of Health Data Consortium forums focusing on state and local health data successes, challenges, and opportunities.  Invited speakers for the event include:

  • Pat Quinn, Governor of Illinois
  • Todd Park,  U.S. Chief Technology Officer
  • Bryan Sivak, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Chief Technology Officer
  • Dr. LaMar Hasbrouck, Director, Illinois Department of Public Health

More speakers and panelists to be announced. Register here for the event on November 8.

Illinois Health Datapalooza

The next day,  Smart Chicago will be helping host the  Illinois Health Datapalooza on November 9th at 1871. The datapalooza brings policy makers, health care practitioners, web developers, designers, and data scientists to find ways to make health data a deeper part of the technology scene Illinois.

The event is organized by the Health Data Consortium, the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) and the Smart Chicago Collaborative.

Christopher Whitaker, consultant and writer for Smart Chicago, has done lots to prepare for this event and will help guide the activities.

The morning sessions will be skill-sharing roundtables with representatives from Socrata, ESRI, and Healthdata.gov on hand to talk about available tools and resources for working with open health data. Midday activities will include brainstorming sessions on current challenges that healthcare policy makers and practitioners have in the field and an exploration into how civic innovation could help address them. The afternoon will feature unconference sessions (where attendees will can propose sessions on anything, from the new healthcare.gov to using Twitter to idenfity flu trends.)

Register for the event November 9th event here.

A Good Idea, on the Side of a Bus: Get A Flu Shot

Lots of work to be done

We’ve talked a lot about the value of civic partnerships have in creating healthier cities and how Chicago has been producing an impressive number of health related civic apps. However,  given the scope of the health care issue at both the local and national levels there is much more work to be done.

For the past few years, the Health Data Consortium  (A coalition of governments, academics, and health care providers formed to liberate health data) have hosted Datapaloozas to find innovative ways to use health data. To date, these events have always been held in Washington DC. This event will be the first of a series of regional gatherings that will bring the focus of health data to the state and local level.

There is an immense opportunity to harness health data into civic startups, to find ways to improve service delivery, and to use predictive analytics to help prevent disease. What’s needed is collaboration between civic technologists and health care practitioners.

We’ll hope you join us.

What We Learned in Our First #CivicSummer

PageLines- civic-summer-logo.pngWhen we kicked off the first annual Civic Innovation Summer here in Chicago, no one knew what to expect. Starting in July, there would be ~150 high school- and college-age teenagers from across the city gathered together every Friday for six weeks in order to learn about technology and open data. Sounds deceptively simple until you start to ask the right questions: Who are these students? What kind of technology do they have access to in their everyday lives? What do they need to learn from us in order to take that next step in their academic or professional lives?

The students we taught this summer were brought together thanks to the Mikva Challenge, which develops the next generation of civic leaders, activists, and policy-makers; and Free Spirit Media, which provides education, access, and opportunity in media production. These organizations had done summer programs with Chicago youths in the past, but neither had experience joining forces to come up with a truly strong technology curriculum targeted at the average Chicago Public School student.

That’s where Smart Chicago stepped in to put together the first ever Civic Innovation Summer (more than 500 images here). Thanks to a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as well as support from the Chicago Community Trust, the Smart Chicago Collaborative was able to develop and deliver an over-arching summer curriculum that would ultimately inspire students to be more curious, try more things, and become technologists in their own right.

But Jacqui, you’re not a teacher

First, let me tell my own story about how I got to be standing in front of ~170 people (students + staffers) every Friday for six weeks to teach them about technology. A lifelong nerd, I had recently become Editor at Large at renown online technology mag Ars Technica. I had previously been part of that amazing family of techno-journalists for 8 years (and before that, a back-end Web programmer), but I felt the itch to get more civically involved in my beloved city of Chicago. As the late Ron May once asked me while shoving a recorder in my face, “How can you be a technologist in Chicago but not be involved in Chicago?”

Jacqui Cheng Speaking at #CivicSummer at 1871

I touched base with Smart Chicago Collaborative Executive Director Daniel X. O’Neil, who is famed in the Chicago tech scene in his own right. Recognized as a co-founder of EveryBlock (R.I.P.) and the person who helped spearhead much of Chicago’s open data initiatives, Dan and I were able to combine forces to put together the kind of tech curriculum that public high school students are rarely exposed to. (I attended a public high school myself out in suburban Chicago, which itself had infinite resources compared to the students in the Chicago Public School system. Still, we barely had what one might consider to be “modern” tech education.)

Dan had some ideas for where he wanted the curriculum to go, and put me in charge of developing it into something we could teach over the course of the summer. This being the first time such a program had been put together here in Chicago, there were, unsurprisingly, some bumps in the road. But now that the program is over and school is on the verge of starting again, we feel confident looking back and saying that the first Civic Innovation Summer was a success, and we look forward to improving on it with the goal of reaching even more students in the future.

So what did we learn?

First, I should probably discuss what we ended up teaching. Part of the goal of Smart Chicago heading up Civic Innovation Summer (or as we’ve been calling it with the youths, #civicsummer) was to make the curriculum itself open: open to the students, open to the public, open to other organizations. As such, we chose to publish most of the Powerpoint presentations we created to go along with our sessions, so you’re free to check them out on the Smart Chicago website anytime.

Ultimately, we ended up having five four-hour Friday sessions with all ~150 students, and five customized two-hour sessions for each of the five different groups of students. Those groups consisted of:

A Juvenile Justice Council dedicated to addressing issues with incarcerated youth

Mikva Education Council #CivicSummer Session at Tribeca Flahspoint

A Health Council dedicated to researching and proposing new ways to educate CPS students about (largely) sex and health

Mikva Health Council #CivicSummer Session at YOUMedia, Harold Washington Library Center

An Education Council dedicated to representing the voices of young people in today’s education debate

DXO Teaching Mikva Education Council

Aldermanic Fellows dedicated to highlighting the voice of youth in each of Chicago’s 50 districts

#CivicSummer Session with Mikva Challenge Aldermanic Fellows
A Mayoral Youth Commission dedicated to interfacing directly with Mayor Emanuel

Mayor's Youth Commission at Devry

And a Documakers group dedicated to creating the kind of citizen journalism that is so necessary from our young people today

Free Spirit Media DocuMakers at Tribeca Flashpoint Academy for Smart Chicago Collaborative's #civicsummer

Each group brought its own  perspective to #civicsummer; we were bombarded with questions related to each of their summer projects, and the students came to us with a wide range of technology experience. This made developing a once-a-week curriculum for the combined group somewhat challenging, and we ended up going off-Powerpoint many times in order to address the students’ wide range of technological needs.

Still, according to feedback from the students themselves, what we ended up with was a strong curriculum that provided an exciting baseline for teenagers looking to go further into technology, either academically or professionally. A session on coding HTML that we threw together on the fly thanks to changing computer resources ended up being the single most popular thing we did all summer–so many of the students praised the HTML session in their exit surveys that it’s almost worth exploring turning that into a summer program on its own.

The second most popular thing we did all summer was take the students on a tour of 1871, Chicago’s largest and most popular digital startup center. The students were enamored with seeing a workplace that was less of a boring office building and more of a creative space for tech people with new ideas.

Tour of 1871 at #CivicSummer

And finally, we were lucky enough to score some major speakers throughout the summer–Harper Reed, Clint Ecker, Dylan Richard, and Dan Carson topped the list for getting the students excited and engaged in learning how to manipulate technology in fun ways.

#CivicSummer Session #2 at TFA

Speakers like project manager Mari Huertas, data analyst Rayid Ghani, UI/UX designer Jason Kunesh were also popular for answering questions about what they do and their own paths to working in technology. And I’m not just saying that: many students specifically named their favorite speaker (or speakers) from #civicsummer and requested more like them for the future.

Mari Huertas Talks About Her Career in Technology at #CivicSummer at 1871

There were other things we learned, too. Namely, they were much more savvy about the Internet and privacy than we expected going in. Most of them were open to sharing their social media lives directly with us, and they were very in-the-know about privacy concerns and settings on the various social networks. We adults like to joke that young people today will be haunted by social media, but I think it’s more accurate to say that they’re making clear decisions about what they’re posting, how to control who sees it, and how to remove those posts when they’re ready. (There’s an argument to be made that our posts online are never fully removable, but students seem to be aware of that than most adults I know today.)

We also learned that students in general need a lot of interactive and video content–a lot. We went in prepared to do a number of university-style lectures, which ultimately wasn’t the best format for a group made of hundreds of teenagers. The lecture format could be better delivered if it’s constantly changing and engaging–the times we showed videos and/or broke into live Internet demos were certainly the most lively. Yet even better would be (more) ability to break the students into small workgroups, and to get the students in front of computers more often for live hands-on tech sessions. We hope to incorporate these things heavily into our planning for future programs like this.

Ultimately, we came out lucky. The students were a joy to work with and used peer policing in order to keep each other in check. And the students loved meeting each other–these smaller groups don’t usually get to interact much, and they were delighted by the ability to come together and meet other youths like them from across Chicago. On our last day, many asked: will we be doing #civicsummer again?

We’re planning on it. Stay tuned.

#CivicSummer Profile Pics

#CivicSummer is in Full Swing: Recap of our Friday Session Held at 1871

PageLines- civic-summer-logo.pngCivic Innovation Summer— the experimental summer jobs program for teens focused on civics, media, and technology— has been rolling all through July.  This program, funded by Smart Chicago based on a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is largely run by the Mikva Challenge, which develops the next generation of civic leaders, activists, and policy-makers and Free Spirit Media, which provides education, access, and opportunity in media production.

But on Fridays, we pull together all of the youth into one room and teach them about technology and the concept of open. We had our first such session last Friday at 1871. Smart Chicago is a founding member of the digital startup center located in the Merchandise Mart, and days like Friday are exactly we why decided to be one of its first tenants.

Here’s the complete set of photos from our day, and a quick look at some illustrative ones:

The raw space inside one of the largest commercial buildings in the world provides a great palette for teaching youth.

Before the flood: #CivicSummer at 1871

Jacqui Cheng put this entire program together, including arranging for a tour of the space and lining up all of the speakers:

Jacqui Cheng Speaking at #CivicSummer at 1871

It was quite an experience to run 150 youth through a space where hundreds of people are running businesses. We appreciate everyone’s patience!

Tour of 1871 at #CivicSummer

That’s a lotta people.

Youth at #CivicSummer @ 1871

Mari Huertas of Mozilla talked about her path to a career in technology

Mari Huertas Talks About Her Career in Technology at #CivicSummer at 1871

Rayid Ghani showed a video about self-driving cars. Teaching computers how to do things is hard.

Rayid Ghani Talks About How to Teach Computers at #CivicSummer at 1871

Jason Kunesh talked about the importance of designing technology to meet the needs of humans.

Jason Kunesh Talks About Designing for Humans Youth at #CivicSummer @ 1871

Is there anything more important than lunch?

Marlene Ho Works the Lunch SituationYouth at #CivicSummer @ 1871

Gene Leynes spoke of his business, Yolobe

Gene Leynes Speaks About Yolobe at #CivicSummer at 1871

We went ahead and got limbered up over lunch

Lunch Activity! Youth at #CivicSummer @ 1871

Jeff McCarter of Free Spirit Media got everyone fired up about what we’re doing.

Jeff McCarter Fires Everyone Up About #CivicSummer

Dirk McCoy talked about Spendbot and his path to starting the company.

Jimmy Odom of WeDeliver talked about starting a business.

Jimmy Odom from WeDeliver Talks About His Business #CivicSummer at 1871

I talked about the importance of real Twitter accounts and having an authentic voice all day, every day.

DXO @ #CivicSummer at 1871

Lastly, here’s the curriculum we used to guide our day:

Next up: our Friday session this week will be at Tribeca Flashpoint Academy and will have lots of special guests!