Announcing openFDA

[Sean Herron]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm really excited to announce the public beta of FDA's new open data initiative, openFDA! Today's launch is a huge advancement in the way that FDA shares our data and source code with the public. We’re making millions of drug adverse event reports easily accessible via a developer API along with a wealth of documentation, code examples, and community initiatives. Previously this data was only available via a rather unfriendly quarterly report or FOIA. You can view it all at https://open.fda.gov.

 

We've put a lot of work in to ensuring a great developer experience, from the documentation and embedded API query examples to our usage of api.data.gov and our new terms of service. On top of all of that, we've open source our entire stack and have already begun accepting pull requests from members of the public. Our hope is that other agencies can use the openFDA platform to create their own innovative data APIs and contribute their findings back to us.

 

Over the next few months, we'll be launching additional APIs, including more adverse event data, product recalls information, and product labels. If you have some time today, please take a look at the site, share around, and let us know what you think!

 

https://open.fda.gov

 

Thanks!

Sean Herron

[Gray Brooks]

All - 

Definitely take a moment to check this out.  Yesterday's API release from FDA is a - simply put - huge.  

Sean and the rest of the FDA team have assembled one of the best government APIs I've ever seen.  This is the new benchmark for us all.  

I really recommend checking out these links but also taking away from them ideas for anything you want to do.  As Leah and I wrote about last week, 18F has formalized and scaled out the API engagement and support options into what we're calling the /Developer Program.  With anything from the FDA release that you want to take back and integrate with your agency's API program, let us know if you need any help and we're happy to help you get it done.  

Gray Brooks

P.S.  A great tweet from yesterday:

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c - 205.541.2245

Sr. API Strategist

Team 18F - GSA

* /Developer Program

* US Government APIs listserve

[Pulsifer, Michael - OPA]

The documentation is well-organized, easy to follow, and doesn’t appear to make any assumptions about the developer reading it.

Well done

Mike Pulsifer

Technical Manager

Division of Enterprise Communications

Office of Public Affairs

U.S. Department of Labor

desk: (202) 693-4946

mobile: (202) 256-1474

[Logan Powell]

Agreed with Gray and Mike, very well done.

:*)

[Brett Michaels]

Nice work Sean!

[Mark Silverberg]

A big congrats to the whole Open FDA team! It was an absolute pleasure to be part of the beta group. We wrote a quick blog post about our very positive experience on our company blog at http://socialhealthinsights.com/2014/06/openfda-api-launch-success/

In a matter of days, we were able to build http://searchopenfda.socialhealthinsights.com which is basically a graphical search interface for the Open FDA FAERS API for people who don't want to write web requests in order to see what all the excitement is about. Like the Open FDA team, we are open to suggestions and feature requests!

Cheers,

Mark

http://twitter.com/skram

[Gray Brooks]

It's great seeing such cool mashups coming out right after launch.  Thanks a bunch for sharing, Mark.  

On a sidenote, I just noticed that Open.FDA.gov has a really cool way to do developer feedback - linking directly to the Open Data Stack Exchange with a tag preset so that questions are better associated for all involved.  Notice that the Ask Questions link in the left sidebar goes to https://opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/ask?tags=openFDA, which prepopulates the correct tag.  This seems like a great model.  

I've included notes on doing this, as well as then embedding Stack Exchange questions here.  Thanks to the FDA for yet more innovation we can all copy.  

Gray B.  

[Mark Silverberg]

Grey- as an external member of the community, I can't agree more. I've long been a lurker on StackOverflow and wasn't sure if it would work as a main support channel but it's already proven efficacious. If you haven't noticed, the great thing is that it's not just Sean/FDA responding to requests but community members as well. Not only is it great for others to learn from each other's questions but it lets community members respond and share answers too which I've geekily found some enjoyment in.

Keep on API-ing all the things ;)

Mark

[Gray Brooks]

FYI - more APIs coming out of the fantastic Open.FDA.gov program:  

* Device Recalls

* Food Recalls

Gray