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Open health data on the European Data Portal

Discover Health-related datasets and use cases from different European countries

Insights into a high value data domain

Health is defined by the World Health Organisation as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being that goes beyond the absence of disease or infirmity. A person's health is dependent on variables such as their surrounding environment, sleeping pattern, diet, work-life balance and level of physical activity. By neglecting to take care of one's health through lack of sleep, an imbalanced diet or lack of physical activity, people are at risk for a weaker immune system meaning they are more vulnerable to getting ill and are more susceptible to mental health problems and depression. As such, there has been continuous research on the various factors that surround health.

For more detail on this topic, look at the European Data Portal's (EDP) datasets and use cases section for examples of reports and services from different European countries that exemplify the value of open data and aim to address the current and future challenges in health.

Impact of health data

The EDP offers overs 7,000 datasets related to health. Health covers a wide range of topics, ranging from air pollution, ambulance usage, smoking and accidents. For example, in relation to air pollution the EDP has air quality report from different air stations in Abbatucci, France, maps that show the interpolated air quality within Belgium and reports on CO2 pollutant analysis in cities such as Lecce in Italy. These datasets aim to increase awareness of different air quality levels within the country and is open for re-use. This means that interested parties can exploit the data and create services, for example, to promote awareness and protect people's health.

The datasets on EDP are provided by national open data portal's that harvest data from different institutions within their country, such as federal, regional and local portals; national, regional and local government bodies or research institutions.

Open data uses cases in Health

The EDP has twenty-five examples of open data use cases focusing on Health.

One example is HybridStat, a service that originated in Greece. HybrdidStat is a small-medium size enterprise in Athens that aims to support life-scientists in answering medical or biological questions that require bio-informatics and bio-statistical analyses. The service collects open data from openly available databases, such as Disgnet, and from biomedical literature. HybridStat then combines open data on gene-disease associations with the outcome of their own analyses on raw DNA sequencing.

Another example is HappyCow, an application and website that originated in the United States of America. The service allows users to find vegetarian, vegan and local plant-based restaurants and cafés around the world and includes search filters for types of stores and types of food ranging from American, Spanish, Indian and Thai. HappyCow collects geodata and data on global vegan and vegetarian establishments.

To gain more information about Health data, explore the European Data Portal.