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FDA launches openFDA to provide easy access to valuable FDA public data

fda.gov

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Re: FDA launches openFDA to provide easy access to valuable FDA public data

#11

Post by seanherron »

loopasam wrote: post #7
seanherron wrote: post #5

Great to see this on HN! I'm one of the openFDA core team members and would love to help people who are interested in using the public drug adverse event API. It's good to note that we've also released all of the source code behind the platform ( https://github.com/fda ) and are actively interested in having members of the community help us make improvements. Please do ping me if you have any questions about the API…

The post mentions that "The FDA will continually work to identify additional public datasets to make available through openFDA" - do you guys already have an idea on what datasets are coming next?

We're going to focus on product recall and product labeling data next - expect to see some more releases throughout the summer.

Re: FDA launches openFDA to provide easy access to valuable FDA public data

#12

Post by seanherron »

afarrell wrote: post #10
Osiris wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure a lot of people, myself included, feel that government projects would be better and cheaper if they were developed as open source rather the the typical proprietary solutions developed by contractors that we see today. What's your take on government and open source projects like this one?

The current state of federal IT contracting is so horrendous, that it is worth trying something if it has a 50% chance of failure, but how much harder is it to get contractors to work on a project if your contract mandates that it be open source or Free Software? seanherron, do you work for a contractor or are you an in-house developer for the FDA or another federal agency?

I'm a federal employee serving as a Presidential Innovation Fellow (http://whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows) working on open data initiatives at the FDA. We worked with a contractor to build the platform and were happy to find they were incredibly excited about the prospect of open source.

Re: FDA launches openFDA to provide easy access to valuable FDA public data

#13

Post by danso »

It's really encouraging to see that there's someone in the U.S. gov't who not only cares about open source and the associated effects of transparency, but has some practical experience* in it.

The openFDA website is built on Jekyll (https://github.com/FDA/open.fda.gov) and its API is powered with Python and Node.js (https://github.com/FDA/openfda)...It's not just the framework/current-tooling that is nice, but that such systems use open, readable formats (such as Markdown for the web pages).

The current administration has always paid lip-service toward open-source...they won't satisfy people who think "open source" and "government" means hand over just about everything...but they're doing a good job making inroads on the parts of the U.S. data interfaces that were well-intended, but so obfuscated by poor design that it was a job in itself to parse/scrape their sites.

(FDA has always had really exhaustive dumps of their data...strewn about their legacy site...the API isn't as interesting to me as the documentation for the API and the pipeline of data)

* I don't want to just slag on Drupal...but Drupal was what Obama's head tech officer wanted in place, and to their credit, they did open-source parts of their custom Drupal modules...which were not particularly useful, because of the particulars of Drupal's module system and its quickly changing API...nevermind being only useful for other Drupal installations. But a lot of credit has to go to the U.S. gov't for pivoting off of Drupal to a mix of WordPress, Jekyll, and even node.js sites with less coupled components. It's been only about two or so years since Data.gov open-sourced its Drupal components before promptly switching to WordPress and CKAN modules...considering how a non-significant number of the fed sites are built on 12+ year-old code...the turnaround in the U.S. gov's stack is pretty amazing...(when it's not attempted on a service-critical site, such as healthcare.gov)

Re: FDA launches openFDA to provide easy access to valuable FDA public data

#15

Post by palidanx »

seanherron wrote: post #11
loopasam wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post mentions that "The FDA will continually work to identify additional public datasets to make available through openFDA" - do you guys already have an idea on what datasets are coming next?

We're going to focus on product recall and product labeling data next - expect to see some more releases throughout the summer.

For product labeling, which data will be released for that?

Re: FDA launches openFDA to provide easy access to valuable FDA public data

#16

Post by RA_Fisher »

I have some history working with the Adverse Event Reporting data. The API is nice, but it just exposes what they already offer in flat files .... stale data. Does it seem reasonable to you that the FDA runs a year behind on this data?

http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInforma...

They don't respond: https://twitter.com/statwonk/status/413355130461761536

Re: FDA launches openFDA to provide easy access to valuable FDA public data

#17

Post by afarrell »

seanherron wrote: post #12
afarrell wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current state of federal IT contracting is so horrendous, that it is worth trying something if it has a 50% chance of failure, but how much harder is it to get contractors to work on a project if your contract mandates that it be open source or Free Software? seanherron, do you work for a contractor or are you an in-house developer for the FDA or another federal agency?

I'm a federal employee serving as a Presidential Innovation Fellow ( http://whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows ) working on open data initiatives at the FDA. We worked with a contractor to build the platform and were happy to find they were incredibly excited about the prospect of open source.

Well if the site turned out well and you liked the experience of working with them, give the contractor some love! Who are they?

Re: FDA launches openFDA to provide easy access to valuable FDA public data

#19

Post by mmohebbi »

afarrell wrote: post #17
seanherron wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a federal employee serving as a Presidential Innovation Fellow ( http://whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows ) working on open data initiatives at the FDA. We worked with a contractor to build the platform and were happy to find they were incredibly excited about the prospect of open source.

Well if the site turned out well and you liked the experience of working with them, give the contractor some love! Who are they?

We're Iodine (http://www.iodine.com), a consumer health startup based in SF. Our backgrounds are varied but many of us came from Google, including three of us from the search team. We're big believers in both open source and open data and we're excited to be part of openFDA!
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