At the TEDMED conference Thursday, a few of the industry’s most seasoned entrepreneurs and investors gave emerging startups a dose of advice. Here are a few of their tips:

1. Let your experience inspire, but don’t just build for yourself.

Several of the most interesting startups I’ve encountered were started by people who had their own collision with the health care system or were deeply affected by the experiences of people close to them.  But while personal experiences can inspire powerful solutions, Nina Nashif, founder and CEO of the Chicago-based health startup accelerator HealthBox, advised startups to make sure that they don’t skimp on doing their homework and talk to multiple stakeholders.

“There are a lot of entrepreneurs that may have experienced their own situation or the situation of someone close to them. And they’re developing a solution for that without actually going out and talking to enough people to make sure they’re not solving the need for one institution… and that they’re building something that has the ability to scale,” she said. “You can’t just sit behind your computer and code in health care, you have to be out in the trenches.”

2. Nuance over need.

As with anything, the devil is in the details. Nashif also said that while healthcare has a lot of need and a lot of solutions, the startups with impact are those that figure out exactly where and how to apply their approach.

“It’s important for entrepreneurs to understand the complexities of the industry and that’s not always easy because entrepreneurs and industry aren’t always speaking the same language,” she said. “Entrepreneurs really need to put their solutions in context.”

3. Build to build, not to sell.

Entrepreneur Michael Weintraub has sold or taken public six startups during his career (most recently, his health IT startup Humedica was acquired by UnitedHealth). But his big piece of advice was this: “I think the key to innovation is building something because you really want to build it not because you want to build to sell it.”

But he also said that startups should get to know the top 10 companies that could be potential acquirers years in advance: “There are a lot of people working for you and counting on you to make the right decision. You’re not flipping the business to cash out, [you’re] putting it in a place that has greater leverage and impact potential,” he added.

4. Ask yourself the hard questions.

When it comes to figuring out the future of your company, it’s important to keep your feelings about your “baby” in check and think hard about the reality of the situation, said Castlight CEO and co-founder Giovanni Colella.

“There’s a point in the life of the company [when] the entrepreneur has to ask himself and the management team the hard question: ‘Can we build the company to last or are we better off as a feature of a bigger product?’ You have to be really honest with yourself,” he said. And even before that point, he added, it’s critical to find investors and a management team that will hold you accountable and force you to think.

5. Get some gray hair on your team.

The general perception may be that startups are for hoodie-wearing early twenty-somethings. But in healthcare (and other fields), you’d do well to find some people with deep experience in the industry and some battle scars to show for it.

“As you’re thinking about starting companies, if you’re young, put a little bit of gray hair into your team of people who have failed and people who are not afraid to say I screwed up… and these are some of the lessons learned, said Juan Enriquez, managing director at Excel Ventures and the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project.

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To support its growing emphasis on “transformational health investing,” the firm also said it had hired a new partner Mohit Kaushal, an MD and MBA, who previously led investments at West Health and served as director of connected health at the Federal Communications Commission.

“The old mantra was very much around improved outcomes as a thesis and then premium pricing on top of that, whether it’s a drug or a device. Aberdare came to the conclusion, from a very bottoms up approach, that the world is changing and that this was not a viable thesis any more,” said Kaushal. “The efficiency angle is just way more important these days.”

Given the rising cost of healthcare and the growing elderly population, as well as shifts in the technology and policy landscape, big changes in the way health care is delivered and regulated are on the horizon. While outcomes are still critical, Kaushal says it’s become increasingly important to encourage cost-effective health care systems.

With an investment portfolio that includes wearable electronics startup MC10, online diabetes prevention program Omada Health and health startup accelerator Rock Health, Aberdare is already a leader in the emerging world of digital health. But Kaushal said the firm will focus even more closely on three areas in healthcare: personalized medicine (including diagnostics and genomics), smart sensors and health care IT.

As various reports have shown, venture capital interest in life sciences companies is on the decline. Some firms like Aberdare and Venrock, which historically invested in more traditional pharmaceutical and device companies, were early supporters of startups that bring newer digital technologies to healthcare.  But others have been slower to shift their focus. Going forward, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the industry shakes out.

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For the past two years, the EMR company, which was co-founded by the country’s CTO Todd Park (before his Washington, DC career), has tried to encourage more openness and innovation with hackathons and conferences through its “More Disruption Please” campaign. But this week, the company said it’s taking its biggest pro-developer step yet with an API (application programming interface) initiative launched in partnership with API management company Mashery.

“Our point of view is that the largest barrier to entry for a lot [health companies] is access to physicians and access to their work flow,” said Armbrester, the company’s director of business development. “What we really want to do is expose APIs and let people build things.”

Starting this week, developers and providers will be able to access APIs that connect to athenahealth’s network of 40,000 providers nationwide.  With access to doctors’ appointment data, patient’s medical history (anonymized , billing information and more, the company hopes developers will be able to create an ecosystem of apps on top of athenahealth’s EMR service in the same way that third-party developers have created apps on top of Facebook’s Open Graph.

Possible apps could help doctors with scheduling, sharing information with other practices, communicating with patients and getting patients to stick to their treatment plans, Armbrester said.

The next step, he added, is the creation of an Apple-like app store where physicians can pick and choose the apps most relevant to their needs. Other EMR providers, including Allscripts and Greenway, have also opened up their APIs to developers and created app marketplaces. But Armbrester said that unlike most traditional health care companies, athenahealth’s multi-tenant cloud-based architecture means that it can roll out application updates to all providers at once.

While the industry has been mostly slow to open up to third-party developers, others have started innovating from the outside. The SMART (Substitutable Medical Applications & Reusable Technology) Platforms Project, led by doctors at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, is creating an ecosystem of apps that can be layered on top of existing EMRs. Once a vendor or hospital IT department implements a software container, hospitals can install SMART apps, which include interactive growth charts for pediatricians, and cardiovascular risk assessments for cardiologists. Last month, mobile API company Apigee said it was creating an API exchange that could be used in health care to help developers write one app that could be used across different hospitals and health organizations.

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Since launching in 2007, Practice Fusion has attracted more than 150,000 doctors with its free web-based service for managing patient information, medical billing and other aspects of practice management. But Patient Fusion is now opening up its information to the public for the first time, enabling patients across the country to search for doctors by specialty and location, read reviews from verified patients and instantly book appointments.

“This is a place where, as an individual patient, your health starts and ends,” said Practice Fusion founder and CEO Ryan Howard.

The company said Patient Fusion lists information for more than 27,000 verified doctors in the U.S., includes 1.5 million verified doctor reviews (an average of 14 per doctor) and has 3 million open appointment slots available for April alone. While other doctor review sites like Vitals.com and Healthgrades, as well as Yelp, enable anyone — even those who have never seen the doctor — to leave reviews, Patient Fusion only allows patients it knows have visited the doctor to review their experience. ZocDoc similarly provides verified patient reviews.

The company also estimates that its pool of doctors is three times as large as ZocDoc’s. ZocDoc doesn’t share the number of doctors who pay to list availabilities on the site, but says it’s available in 1,700 U.S. cities and that 2.5 million people use it a month. In major cities like New York, patients might not see a big difference in coverage between ZocDoc and Patient Fusion, Howard acknowledged. And, certainly, it could take Patient Fusion a while to build ZocDoc-like name recognition among consumers. But he added that in more remote parts of the country, Patient Fusion could provide more more doctors and more available slots.

Another benefit for patients who pick Patient Fusion over other sites: they’ll be able to get instant access to their personal health records. While some doctors on ZocDoc or other doctor discovery and booking sites may use electronic medical record services that enable the easy exchange of medical records, patients using Patient Fusion will not only be able to book appoints online, but access digital lab reports, view real-time updates to their records and potentially benefit from other kinds of digital communication.

While ZocDoc charges doctors about $300 a month to list their availabilities on its site, Patient Fusion is free to patients and doctors. It eventually plans to serve advertising (as it does on Practice Fusion) but its bigger play is aggregating even more data about patient conditions, medication, treatment outcomes and more. That data (de-identified and in aggregate) gives it an interesting view of health trends and could be valuable to pharmaceutical companies and other health care players.

According to a survey of health entrepreneurs conducted last November, both Practice Fusion, which has raised $70 million in venture capital, and ZocDoc, which has raised $95 million, were considered two of the health tech companies likely to file for an IPO next.

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According to recent studies, pediatricians aren’t the only ones who find that electronic health records include design flaws that make it difficult to find data and complete important tasks.

The SMART Platforms Project, led by doctors at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, is building a set of apps meant to optimize EHRs for doctors. Their most recent project combines medical expertise with design thinking to give clinicians an interactive growth chart that quickly highlights the most important information.

“Central to the practice of pediatrics – both in prevention and diagnosis – is this growth curve,” said Isaac Kohane, a pediatric endocrinologist and principal investigator of SMART (which stands for (Substitutable Medical Applications & Reusable Technology). “And, sadly, it’s the most neglected portion of the record in EHR because a) it’s different and doesn’t look like most of the data and b) pediatrics is a relatively small market compared to adult medicine.”

How can doctors’ intuition inform design?

SMART has already built a handful of apps, but to recreate the pediatric growth chart, the program turned to a design firm for the first time. Over several months, designers from design consultancy Fjord worked with a panel of medical experts, including a pediatric cardiologist, statisticians and pediatric endocrinologist.

At first, the designers’ role was absorbing as much as they could and, at times, that meant totally recalibrating their perspectives, said Charlie Gower, the lead designer on the project. “We’d find ourselves saying ‘that sounds ridiculous,’” he said. “Initially, it’s quite different, the things they want and the things they need.”

But, over time, his team came to understand the doctors’ point of view, he added.

“Doctors tend to do an awful lot from their gut – they’ve sucked in knowledge over a great deal of time and this knowledge informs what they do,” Gower said, “They have ways that they like to do things and ways of doing things that they rely on.”

The result of the partnership is an interactive tool that gives clinicians an easy way to view graphs showing a child’s entire growth picture, including length, weight, head circumference or body mass index, while letting them choose the graphs and comparisons that are most appropriate for that child. For example, while most clinicians might only look at a standard Centers for Disease Control chart, SMART’s tool lets them choose from other charts from the World Health Organization or those for children with Downs Syndrome.  It also lets them quickly plot development measurements against several charts at once.

All of that may sound fairly simple, but Dr. Kohane emphasized that children quickly establish a pattern of growth, and deviations from that pattern can provide early signals of obesity, thyroid disorders, Celiac disease and other conditions.  While standard EHR tools may make it harder for doctors to pick up on those aberrations, SMART’s app actually detects anomalies and notifies the doctor to take a deeper look.  It also spots data entry errors and provides parents with a less technical view of their child’s growth — another helpful feature given the confusion and concern growth charts can often create.

Building an app ecosystem for electronic health systems

Beyond the specific use of the tool, this partnership between doctors and designers highlights a growing trend. As doctors bring more of their devices to work and as more direct-to-patient health and wellness tools emerge, design is becoming an increasingly important consideration in building health services, said Gower.

And, added Dr. Kohane, the hope is that apps like this can motivate a larger community of developers. Recognizing that the world of electronic health records is dominated by giant vendors that can take time to innovate to meet clinicians’ needs, SMART was created with funding from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology of to support an ecosystem of apps that can be layered on top of existing EHRs.  Once a vendor or hospital IT department implements a software container, Dr. Kohane said, a hospital can install a SMART app for free.

When it first launched, the program focused more on the technical aspects of adding its apps to an EHR system, but now its emphasis is building apps that can show its potential. “[We want to] make apps that really inspire people to work forward much in the way that many of the early iPhone apps were inspiring to others,” Dr. Kohane said.

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That point was driven home yesterday during a Social Media Week panel I moderated on How Behavior and Patients Can Fix Health Care.  I was chatting with three health tech entrepreneurs, Dr. Jay Parkinson, co-founder of Sherpaa; Unity Stoakes, co-founder of Startup Health; and Derek Flanzraich, founder of Greatist, about how they and their organizations are changing health care, when one of the audience members commented that the conversation felt too “self-referential” and asked how to close the behavior gap in health technology. (You can see the whole discussion here.)

It was an entirely fair question – and one that I hope all health technologists ask themselves regularly. While technology, especially mobile devices, is more ubiquitous than ever, there are still disparities in broadband access, availability of digital tools and information about new services. The Pew Internet & American Life Project, for example, reports that Latinos (55 percent) and African-Americans (58 percent) are less likely than Whites (75 percent) to have a home Internet connection. Not surprisingly, Pew also says that those with more education and higher incomes are also more likely to go online for health care information – 78 percent of those who earn more than $75,000 vs. 45 percent of those who earn less than $30,000.

Keep early adopters happy, let them help spread the word

On the panel, Dr. Parkinson said that Sherpaa, which works through employers to provide 24/7 access to doctors via email and phone, targets companies like Tumblr and General Assembly because “you have to start with people that get it.”

“If Facebook or the iPhone started marketing to my parents first they wouldn’t have taken off,” he said. The economics of healthcare is slow (especially relative to the pace of technology) because it’s defined by the government, but by keeping early adopters happy and buzzing about their experiences with Sherpaa, he said he hopes they can gradually educate more and change the system.

Another way to bring the masses into the new health movement is by making it more accessible and relatable through trusted brands, said Flanzraich. In the last year, Greatist, a health and fitness content site that’s part Buzzfeed, part fitness magazine and part health journal, has seen its traffic climb sixfold to just under three million unique visitors. And he said those users, who are mostly from outside early adopter hubs New York and San Francisco, are drawn in because the site connects important health news to pop culture and other topics people already want to read about.

I also added that employers play an important role in bringing health technology to a wider audience. Using Fitbits and Nike Fuelbands that track activity and calories burned may seem like naval-gazing to non-techies, but they could start to mean more if employers reward people for activities logged on those devices, for example, with health insurance discounts or FSA (flexible spending account) credits. At first, it may be the more tech-forward employers that see the value in programs like this. But if companies like employee wellness startup Keas can show employers cost savings, devices that motivate behavior change could matter to even more populations.

Report: Better data collection could pinpoint and address disparities

As technology proliferates, innovation is also spreading organically into different corners of the world, noted Stoakes. For example, SMS-based efforts are enabling drug authentication in Africa and boosting immunization rates in India.

However, in the U.S., even though early adopter patients and doctors will lead the way, health innovators and policymakers can do more to bridge knowledge and behavior gaps. (At GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in March, I’ll be speaking with Aetna’s head of innovation about how big data can improve patient care and lower costs.) A report  presented at a White House Summit on “ehealth equity” this week outlines a few ways to do that. Written by consumer groups The Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, the Consumer Union and the National Council of La Raza, it offers several recommendations on how health information technology could reduce imbalances in care, particularly in communities of color, limited English proficient groups and immigrants and mixed-status families.

For example, it suggests capitalizing on mobile technology, designing web sites that consider differences in culture and health literacy and developing outreach strategies specifically targeting the underserved.

One area in health IT that could lead to particularly positive improvements is data collection and analysis, the report says.  Although it emphasized security to prevent the misuse of data, the report says better demographic information could help identify disparities and lead to services that more appropriately consider linguistic or other cultural needs.

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This week, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released its annual report on the top health industry issues. The document touches on everything from state debates over establishing Affordable Care Act-mandated health insurance exchanges to employers’ new role in providing health care to the growing influence of the consumer. Chris Wasden, PwC’s Global Healthcare Innovation Leader, chatted with me about how technology specifically fits into the bigger picture and the ways in which it will impact the industry in the next few months and years.

2013 is a critical year in healthcare for several reasons, he said – this year, health insurance exchanges are supposed to be ready to come online, doctors are incentivized to meet new electronic health record guidelines and more hospitals will feel the pinch from new penalty fines for high readmission rates. But even aside from the changing policy landscape, a big driver of technology in health care is simply its ubiquity in the lives of consumers.

“Consumers [think that] with my mobile device, I can control the light fixtures in my home remotely, I can buy and sell goods, I can get directions. I’m able to do all these things and yet, when I walk into [the doctor’s] office, I can’t use my mobile device to do anything,” said Wasden.

Technology is poised to shape the health care industry in several ways – here are seven of those trends to watch in 2013.

Consumers get more tools for being cost-savvy

If you needed to buy a plane ticket across the country, you’d likely have a sense of how much it would cost and, if not, you’d at least know where to go to find out. But what if you needed to pay for an MRI? Or a colonoscopy? Or a mammogram? Comparison shopping is the modus operandi for most big-ticket items we purchase, but not so for healthcare – until now.

We’re clearly not going to become a nation of cost-savvy health care consumers overnight. But as states implement the recently-passed Affordable Care Act (ACA) and establish health care exchanges, they’ll be under more pressure to provide tools that assist people in choosing their own coverage. The push for more transparency is also coming from employers’ shifts to higher-deductible health plans and, says PwC, the rise of retail health clinics that provide health services in nontraditional environments, like pharmacies, big box stores and other non-medical locations. Sites like Castlight Health, ClearCostHealth and GoHealth are leading the way in comparison shopping, while startups like Simplee and CakeHealth help consumers manage and understand their health care finances.

Employer as health coach

When it comes to health care, employers have played the role of banker for decades, but, going forward, many may start playing the part of coach. Given new incentives in the ACA and in light of rising health care costs, employers will increasingly rethink their roles, says PwC. And, as they do, many could embrace prevention-focused, data-driven employee wellness programs that quantifiably monitor employees’ behavior and provide tangible rewards. With new fitness trackers like FitBits, WiFi-enabled scales and biometric devices that measure blood glucose levels, blood pressure and other vital signs, programs from companies like Healthrageous remotely track patient progress and outcomes; companies like Keas use social media and gamification to keep employees engaged; and PUSH, for example, actually pays employees for achieving their goals.

Consumer ratings make a difference

Consumer reviews are run-of-the mill for everything from restaurants and reviews to gadgets and books sold on Amazon. And they’re slowly making their way into health. Through consumer services, like ZocDoc, HealthTap and Healthgrades, patients are reading and contributing comments about their doctors. And, PwC’s report highlights that government payment to hospitals is increasingly being connected to consumer experience and satisfaction. Historically, health care providers have been resistant to reviews, believing that patient ratings would skew negative. But a study last year, found that patient reviews were largely positive. A more recent study indicated that too few patients had submitted reviews for rankings on sites like Healthgrades, Vitals and RateMD to be reliable. Still, though there are limitations to the ratings, patients support them and their value is expected to grow.

Nonphysicians put on the doctor’s coat

You’ve likely heard the phrase “doctor shortage” bandied about considerably in recent months. But according to a new study in Health Affairs, most estimates don’t consider how new technology, paired with nonphysicians, can make it possible to treat more patients with fewer physicians.  The health care industry may be more resistant to this kind of change than any other, says Wasden. But electronic communication, big data and other kinds of information technology will result in nurses, pharmacists and other nonphysicians stepping up to offset at least some of the increase in demand for doctor services.

Health comes home

Considering that we spend far more of our time at our houses and apartments than we do at the doctor’s office, health has always started with the home, Wasden notes. But the rise of telehealth services, from startups like Ringadoc to a national telehealth program from insurer WellPoint, as well as the growth of connected and wearable devices that enable doctors to monitor patients remotely, will make health even more bound to the home. Additionally, PwC reports that concierge medicine and “population health” approaches to care, which reward physicians based on outcomes, not treatment, are on the rise. And to keep patients healthy and out of their offices, physicians will increasingly rely on digital communication.

Consumerization of health IT

Mobile technology, as we and others have reported, is sweeping health care.  But that isn’t because IT departments across the industry have pushed it into the doctor’s office, it’s because doctors and consumers have. Doctors rarely warm quickly to IT initiatives, Wasden said, but because of their attachment to their mobile devices, they’re starting to bring them to work. The downside of the “bring your own device” trend is that hospitals must contend with security issues. But the upside is that it’s bringing consumer technology into health at a faster pace, which bodes well for patient engagement and more communication between patients and health care providers.

Big pharma goes ‘beyond the pill’

For years, drug companies have been looking for ways to provide value “beyond the pill,” says Wasden, and as they do, more are turning to apps, devices and sensor-based technology. Those options help keep them relevant to consumers on an ongoing basis and they help them address increasing pressure to show outcomes.  For example, earlier this year, Pfizer launched a Lipitor app just as generic versions of its drug hit the market. Drug firm Novartis is an investor in Proteus Digital Health, which this summer received FDA approval for its chip-embedded pill.

Image by Brian A Jackson via Shutterstock.

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“I have never seen an industry with more gaping security holes,” Avi Rubin, a computer scientist and technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, told the The Post. “If our financial industry regarded security the way the health-care sector does, I would stuff my cash in a mattress under my bed.”

Relative to other industries, including finance and the military, hospitals and medical facilities have been targeted by fewer hacks, the report said, but government officials have recently indicated growing concern. In May, the Department of Homeland Security released a notice warning that while wireless technology can bring efficiency and flexibility to healthcare, it also introduces security risks that the industry may not be ready to address.

The Post  is hardly the first to flag security as a growing problem for healthcare – a study earlier this month from the Ponemon Institute and ID Experts found that a third of health organizations polled don’t have the technology, budget or trained personnel to handle contemporary security challenges. But the article detailed several anecdotes indicating that while the industry is trying to deal with the problem, its culture and technology are behind the times.

For example, it said that doctors and other medical workers at an unnamed institution used the same computers to connect to both the Internet and internal networks, with some staffers leaving computers unattended and unprotected. It also said that the University of Chicago Medical Center recently left itself vulnerable to hackers after posting a document for residents online that included login information for a shared Dropbox account (the University has since closed the loophole).

To date, despite the many vulnerabilities and the many data breaches suffered by hospitals and healthcare institutions, hackers have mostly focused their attention elsewhere. According to a report by GovernmentHealthIT, six of the top 10 breaches were related to a stolen unencrypted laptop and three of the 10 involved an employee or former employee who inappropriately accessed patient information through email or other means. Only one – albeit the biggest incident – involved a hacker who accessed patient information through a Utah Department of Health server.

But as more patient information goes online, larger-scale hack attacks and the threat of medical identity theft – which some say is more costly and difficult to correct than other forms of identity theft – could increase. As it is, some studies indicate that patients are already apprehensive about Electronic Health Records, and for them to get the most out of those platforms and other digital health services, they need systems they can trust.

Some steps forwarded indicated by The Post report, include increased government oversight, particularly more clarity from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on its position, as well as more education and investment on the part of the industry.

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But New York-based Hello Health is one company trying to change that with an electronic health records (EHR) platform that helps doctors and patients make the shift to digital.

The company on Monday announced that it had raised $11.5 million from First Generation Capital, which follows a $10 million round raised last year.

As more doctors move their patients’ health information online – incentivized by the federal government – Hello Health says it offers physicians a platform that is not only free, but helps them earn additional revenue.

Through its Web-based system, physicians can share lab results and other information with patients in a HIPAA-secure environment, as well as enable patients to schedule appointments and upload documents. But instead of charging physicians (like many of its older rivals), Hello Health charges patients a monthly subscription fee of $5. Hello Health takes a percentage of the fee and the physician gets the remainder.

“It’s more of a partnership than a simple SaaS model,” said Steven Ferguson, vice president of physician marketing for Hello Health.

With the new funding, Ferguson said the company, which is a subsidiary of Quebec-based Myca Health, plans to build out new features, including those to better manage patients’ medical charts and streamline referrals.

When it launched in 2008, Hello Health was intended to be more of a consumer-friendly concierge service. (And, interestingly, one of Hello Health’s original co-founders, Dr. Jay Parkinson, has gone on to launch Sherpaa, a concierge-like service, paid for by employers, that provides round-the-clock access to doctors.) But later, Hello Health pivoted into its current version.

While Hello Health may offer doctors an interesting business model, it has many competitors in the EHR industry, including public companies Allscripts and Cerner, and rising startup Practice Fusion, which also offers physicians a free option.

Image by RTimages via Shutterstock.

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By accessing information in government databases through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, healthcare innovators are now able to share connections between doctors that are based on millions of physician referrals — a valuable indicator of who doctors hold in esteem.

Last month, Fred Trotter, a self-identified “hacktivist,” revealed that he had obtained a dataset of Medicare physician referrals through a FOIA request and was making the initial data available to those who supported a Medstartr crowdfunding campaign meant to build out his “DocGraph” and make it freely available. This week, he announced that he not only blew past his $15,000 funding goal, but was launching a second campaign to integrate his current data with an additional dataset.

HealthTap, a Palo Alto-based startup that connects patients with an online network of 17,000 doctors, also this week launched a new feature based partly on Trotter’s data. Called “DOConnect,” it combines Trotter’s Medicare data with physician data from its own site and other sources to give patients a new window into their doctors’ networks.

“This isn’t just friendships and business connections. This is who doctors trust,” said HealthTap co-founder and CEO Ron Gutman. “If you could know who your doctor’s doctor is, if you knew who they would choose, this lets you see that for the first time.”

A HealthTap visualization of the connections between physicians on its site.

The new tool, which reflects 25 million doctor referral connections, enables patients to see how many doctors are linked to a particular doctor, as well as their locations. As patients search for new physicians and specialists, being able to see who their current doctors are linked with could help them decide who to visit.  It also gives doctors an opportunity to build online networks that reflect their offline networks, Gutman said. In a post about his “DocGraph” project, Trotter said that his data wasn’t strictly a “referral” data set because, in some cases, doctors might be linked through a patient they both happened to see at the same time, not through an active referral. But Gutman emphasized that HealthTap’s DOConnect considered more than Medicare referrals in mapping connections between doctors.

In releasing the dataset, Trotter said his main goal was to create doctor-rating algorithms that “patients find useful and doctors find fair.” But he also hoped that academics, health policy wonks, entrepreneurs and others would use it to bring more transparency to health care overall.

Todd Park, the U.S. Chief Technology Officer, has frequently talked up the value of “setting data free” and has backed hackathons, “datapaloozas” and other open data initiatives to highlight the need for innovators to use government data for the public good — this is a great example of that vision and, hopefully, points to more similar projects in the future.

“Our goal is to empower the patient, make the system transparent and accountable, and release this data to the people who can use it to revitalize our health system,” Trotter wrote.

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