The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Innovations’ Facebook page is congregating interesting examples of organizations leveraging health data to create new ideas or applications. Because we are alway on the watch for great new uses of health data, we’ll be using this blog to take a look at a few health apps that have been submitted.
If you or your organization is involved with a creative new health app, share it on their page – or better yet, present or exhibit it at Health Datapalooza IV. If you’re curious about how others are using and creating health data apps, check out the HHS Facebook storybook page. Reposted below is Michael Silverberg’s story about making an HHS database of resources for seniors accessible by phone and text.
Eldercare Locator By Phone and Text
The U.S. Administration on Aging under the Health and Human Services maintains a database of resources available to seniors in the United States. The goal of the eldercare locator program according to the website is to provide users with the information and resources to help older persons live independently and safely in their homes and communities for as long as possible.
The eldercare database provides information about various services including (but not limited to) caregivers, Alzheimer’s, financial assistance, healthy aging, long-term care, legal assistance, and much more. Recently the Administration on Aging released an application program interface (API) to the database which got my team thinking: how might the less tech savvy elderly population access this information?
While there is a number that can be called, it is only available during certain business hours. So we had a problem that the Social Health Insights team thinks needs a solution. In response to this our alpha version of a yet to be named unified voice technology interface was born. Keeping it simple by calling a single phone number, sending a simple text message or calling via services like Skype (or one of the other options in the blog post), any user can interact with Eldercare Location information.
Read more about the Eldercare Locator By Phone and Text project.
Access the open source code on Github.