IHME announces release of new Global Health Data Exchange

What: The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington has created a user-friendly, searchable data catalog for global health, public health, and demographic data. The Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) offers a robust search engine and intuitive user interface to make finding data easy. The GHDx contains useful data sources, data providers, and the information needed to easily create citations - some of which are difficult to locate or scattered among different resources. It will be launched at the Global Health Metrics & Evaluation conference (GHME) 2011.

At launch, GHDx will have about 1,000 datasets in the catalog, including surveys, censuses, administrative data, statistical yearbooks, and hospital data. With the platform now complete, IHME expects to increase that number dramatically in coming months. The GHDx makes high-quality metadata freely available, reconciling conflicting information and providing the critical information needed to pinpoint the time, source, and content of the datasets that are so important to researchers in the field. IHME will share all of its research results through the GHDx and invites countries and organizations to make their data available to the public on the GHDx at high transfer speeds with no fees.

When: March 14, 2011, 12:45 p.m. (PST)

Where: The Westin Seattle, 1900 5th Ave., Seattle, Washington, USA

Why: Through the GHDx, IHME and its collaborators are creating a global health data community by encouraging the sharing of public health data, allowing organizations to reach a broader audience with their data and helping countries in low-resource settings overcome technological constraints. The GHDx credits people and organizations who have worked hard to gather and process data.

IHME works to identify the best strategies to build a healthier world. By measuring health, tracking program performance, and finding ways to maximize health system impact, IHME provides a foundation for informed decision-making that ultimately will lead to better health globally. IHME is co-hosting GHME 2011.