With a goal of making data on the availability of flu shots more discoverable and more usable, the City of Philadelphia is leading an effort to create a standard specification for flu shot location data that can be used by any municipality. This will help encourage wider dissemination of this data and use in third-party website and applications.
Making it quick and easy to find a location that dispenses flu vaccinations is an ideal problem for a civic application to help solve. Information on flu shot locations and schedules can be easily displayed via a web site, mobile app, or even via SMS, and can be easily integrated into a personal calendar or reminder app.>
Data on where flu vaccinations are dispensed are typically compiled - albeit in differing formats and data structures - by local public health officials. By developing a standard format for this data, cities can more easily encourage the integration of this data into maps and civic applications.
A draft specification is being developed jointly by the cities of Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and New York. The latest version of the draft can be found on GitHub.
To participate in the development of this specification, simply fork the existing GitHub repo and submit a pull request. Or, open a new issue on the repo here.
