Category: Blog

  • How Healthify Uses Open Referral Standards to Strengthen Care Coordination

    How Healthify Uses Open Referral Standards to Strengthen Care Coordination

    Welcome to Shelby Switzer, the Head of Integrations at Healthify! Healthify is a startup that helps healthcare providers address their patients’ social determinants of health. This has been cross-posted from Healthify’s blog. Data has been at the core of Healthify’s … Continue reading →

  • Maryland Open211: Learning a New Language

    Maryland Open211: Learning a New Language

    There is a great scene in the 1984 version of Footloose where the high school “punk” Wren (played by Kevin Bacon) seeks permission from the town council to hold a dance. The local Pastor (played by John Lithgow) reminds Wren, the local citizens, and the town council that a dance is fraught with evil and…

  • Socrata announces support of Open Referral for gov data

    Socrata announces support of Open Referral for gov data

    This post is from Stuart Gano at Socrata. See our post on Socrata’s blog here.  When Socrata thinks about the future, we want to see government decisions driven by data on a massive scale, across departments and municipalities. And, we … Continue reading →

  • Hacking on Link With Optimizely And Benetech

    Hacking on Link With Optimizely And Benetech

    Open Referral went to San Francisco on Wednesday August 9th to participate in a social good hack-day at Optimizely. In collaboration with our partner Benetech, Open Referral set up as one of the social good projects that 20+ employees worked on for the day.   Overall, our team was strong in front-end web and mobile…

  • Version 1.1 of the Human Services Data API Specification

    Version 1.1 of the Human Services Data API Specification

    [This post is from Kin Lane, the API Evangelist, who is serving as Open Referral’s deputized Technical Lead for our OpenAPI specification project. Thanks Kin!] Version 1.1 of the Human Services Data API specification (HSDA 1.1) is now available for review and comment. This is an alpha implementation of our OpenAPI specification. It is built upon version…

  • Our Video: Open Referral in Three Minutes

    Our Video: Open Referral in Three Minutes

    Open Referral is grappling with a complex, systemic issue – so we made an animated video to explain the problem and our approach to solutions in just a few minutes. Check it out here: The Open Referral Explainer from Open Referral on Vimeo. Continue reading →

  • Miami Open211 Phase One: Our Report

    Miami Open211 Phase One: Our Report

    Last year, the Miami Open211 project set out to demonstrate that an information-and-referral helpline operator can evolve into an open platform — providing machine-readable data as a service to its community — in ways that are both technically efficient and institutionally sustainable. This project, which began in partnership with Switchboard of Miami, was Open Referral’s first formal pilot with…

  • Upgrade: the Human Services Data Specification version 1.1

    Upgrade: the Human Services Data Specification version 1.1

    by Tim Davies of the Open Data Services Cooperative After two years of testing, feedback, and deliberation across the Open Referral initiative, we’ve just upgraded the Human Services Data Specification to version 1.1. Check HSDS v1.1 out here. If you have questions or feedback, you can comment there directly on the site or discuss the changes in…

  • Talking Open Referral at Stanford’s Data on Purpose

    Talking Open Referral at Stanford’s Data on Purpose

    Last month I visited Stanford to speak at the 2017 Data on Purpose conference, sponsored by Stanford’s Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, the Stanford Social Innovation Review and Digital Impact (née Markets for Good). From Possibilities To Responsibilities: Unlocking Data and Unleashing Its Potential (Jake Porway et al) from Stanford PACS. Much of the…