Congress should work to release more government health...

requested comment on how to improve healthcare transparency (http://1.usa.gov/1lznzv4). The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s Center for Data Innovation said Congress should focus on three areas: “Releasing taxpayer-funded research data in non-proprietary and machine readable formats; releasing claims data from other programs besides Medicare, including data from Medicaid, Tricare, Federal Employees Health Benefits, and Indian Health; and encouraging data sharing across the healthcare industry” (http://bit.ly/1t4hMQp). Pew Charitable Trusts also pointed to medical device performance data as critical to both doctors and patients. “One area where patients and physicians need better information is the performance of medical devices after they receive approval or clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)” (http://bit.ly/1oy1n7D). The eHealth Initiative, a health IT advocate, pushed for patients’ greater access to their own health data. “Increasing the availability of mobile, medical device patient data sources for integration into the clinical health record will further enrich the data available for patients and clinicians to monitor care outside traditional settings of care” (http://bit.ly/1uybVG7). Comments were due Monday and have been published throughout the week.