*** Improve long term planning and increase effectiveness of governance.***

Monday, April 27th 2015: Open Knowledge Ireland today called on Health Minister, Leo Vradkar, to support the efforts of the Open Knowledge Community to increase the usefulness of publicly available Health Sector Data, by ensuring its publication in an open data format. The National Treatment Purchase Fund currently publishes its Out-Patient Waiting list and In-patient/Day Case Waiting list reports in PDF format which makes them impossible to access automatically thus limiting their usefulness. Over the past few months Open Knowledge Ireland has scraped the data from these NTPF lists and created a dataset of easily accessible information. The datasets are available here and clearly show that the longest waiting lists are in the areas of Otolaryngology, Orthopaedics, Opthamology and General Surgery. Open Knowledge Ireland believes that if the NTPF begins publishing datasets in an accessible way, then this can act as a catalyst to encourage other agencies to make their publicly available data open.  Adrian Corcoran (Open Knowledge Ireland), commented: ‘We would like to replicate the NTPF pilot by building a network of “projects” which each tackle a specific area of publically available healthcare data and then ensure that these islands of data can be crosslinked for increased transparency.’ This requires a twined approach:

1. Track 1 – Publish publicly available Health data in an open data format (Health Minister, Leo Vradkar)
2. Track 2 – Develop prototypes to help visualise this information, with a particular emphasis on linking across datasets (Open Knowledge, Volunteers)

Open Knowledge Ireland’s Denis Parfenov, commented: ‘In May, the government will relaunch the data portal data.gov.ie which is the ideal opportunity to include hospital waiting lists in Ireland’s open data. We’re calling on Minister Vradkar to introduce open data of hospital lists as a matter of urgency, which in itself may not directly reduce waiting lists, but it will increase transparency which can lead to prioritisation of funding to improve access to health; this is surely one of the most basic but important needs of all citizens.’ Ends For further information: Denis Parfenov, Ambassador of Open Knowledge for Ireland, 086 385 0044 Adrian Corcoran, Project Director, Open Knowledge Ireland, 087 680 3873 Rachel Power, Public Relations Executive, 087 933 1154 Project URL: http://openknowledge.ie/projects/open-hospital-waiting-list/ Note for Editor: Open Knowledge Ireland (https://openknowledge.ie/) is part of the global Open Knowledge non-profit network. OK are people passionate about openness, and using advocacy, technology and training to unlock data to enable people to create, manage and share knowledge. The Open Knowledge (https://okfn.org/) is a non-profit organisation founded in 2004 and dedicated to promoting open data and open content in all their forms – including government data, publicly funded research and public domain cultural content.