opendata
jwilbanks | August 20, 2009I wrote this up on the request of a colleague who heard my talk recently on open data. I'm posting it here for comment and adding some hyperlinks...
Moving from a Web of documents to a Web of data (or of Linked Open Data) is an oft-cited goal in the sciences. The Web of data would allow us to link together disparate information from unrelated disciplines, run powerful queries, and get precise answers to complex, data-driven questions. It's an undoubtedly desirable extension of the way that the existing networks increase the value of documents and computers through connectivity - Metcalfe's…
jwilbanks | August 5, 2009I was in a roundtable yesterday talking about Health IT with a bunch of very smart people in the bay area. It was sort of a briefing of ourselves and others about the real issues underpinning what it would take to generate real disruptive innovation in health technology and health costs. The vast majority of the conversation centered on payment reform, which is outside my ambit.
But we did spend some time talking about health data standards, and the problem of getting standards that are so geared to the existing market-dominant companies that they actually froze out new market entrants. My…
jwilbanks | May 18, 2009Open Knowledge Foundation have released a short guide to open data as part of the open data commons project.
I have my philosophical disagreements with OKF on some issues - and they with me! - but they're the kind of disagreements that come from people on the same side of the fence. We all want open data, and we want it now.
Moments like this are good to step back and focus on our agreements. We agree that data is a little weird, and that we need more research on how to best treat the law around the data. We agree that public sector information needs to be free - in fact, Rufus Pollock has…
jwilbanks | April 22, 2009The Tropical Disease Initiative has released a "kernel" for open source drug discovery. It's been published in both Nature Biotechnology (ugh, subscription required) and in PLoS Neglected and Tropical Diseases (yay, open access fulltext under CC-BY).
I am not steeped enough in the reality of drug discovery to make believable statements about how much this means for those actually on the ground looking for cures. I do know that drug targets are only the first step on a really long road to drugs in patients, and Derek Lowe has written a very informative post on this topic over at In the…