100% Impressive: New: Health Datasets and Visulizations From the Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx)

Direct to Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx)

A new “must have” resource for health researchers, journalists, educators, and others. 100% impressive! Even if you’re not a health researcher many of the concepts that when into developing the Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) and the design of the platform are applicable to many types of data.

What is It?

The GHDx is a data catalog listing information about microdata, aggregated data, and research results with a focus on health-related and demographic datasets. We point to the data providers where possible, and we will increasingly provide public data for download on the GHDx. If you want to make your data public, if you want to make your data public, contact us.

A Pre-Launch Announcement Provides a Good Overviewm:

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.

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.

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.

Note: Emphasis Added

From a New Article in the The Daily (U. of Washington Paper)

“When we do research in all those areas that encompass global health, we need a lot of data from a variety of countries,” said Peter Speyer, IHME director of data development, promotion and dissemination. “Every time, we have to start from scratch searching for data. Having a tool like this will be incredibly helpful for anyone who does anything related to what we do.”

Nicely said.

The database is located on the IHME website and is accessible to any member of the public. While the tool is intended primarily for professional and academic researchers, Speyer said that it will serve as a valuable resource for students or anyone else who has an interest in global-health issues.

Quick Links to a Small Portion of What’s Available

• Search or Browse (Drop Down Menus) the Global Health Data Exchange Database

• A Collection of Interactive Data Visualizations
  
• Also From the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME): Interactive: Create Data Maps (Just Select and Click)
• Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) Blog
  
• Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation via Twitter
• More Data Sites

Direct to Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx)

Filed under: Associations and Organizations, Data Files, Journal Articles, Maps, Resources